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I 



APRIL 1985 VOL.10, NO. 4 



$3.50 m UNITED STATES 

$4.25 IN CANADA / £2.10 IN U.K. 

A McGRAW-HILL PUBLICATION 

0360-5280 



THE SMALL SYSTEMS JOUR' 



ARTIFICIAL 
INTELLIGENCE 



Introducing The 
AHyou rave fe 






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CONTENTS 




100 




124 



FEATURES 



Introduction 100 

Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar: Build the Home Run Control System. 

Part I: Introduction by Steve Garcia 102 

Steve returns to the field of home control in this first part of a three-part series. 

Coprocessing in Modula-2 by Colleen Roe Wilson 113 

This method lets you cooperatively process information by interleaved 
execution on a single computer. 

A Million-Point Graphics Tablet by lames Hawley 120 

Build a graphics pad for less than $200 using the KoalaPad for input. 

THEMES 



Introduction . 124 

Communication with Alien Intelligence by Marvin Minsky 126 

It may not be as difficult as you would think 

The Quest to Understand Thinking 

by Roger Sehank and Larry Hunter 143 

It begins not with complex issues but with the most trivial of processes. 

The LISP Tutor by \ohn R. Anderson and Brian |. Reiser 159 

The system described offers many of the advantages of a human tutor 
in teaching LISP programming 

PROUST by W. lewis \ohnson and Elliot Soloway 179 

This LISP program automatically debugs the efforts of novice Pascal programmers 

Architectures for AI by Michael F. Deering 193 

The right combination of hardware and software is necessary for 
efficient processing. 

The LISP Revolution by Patrick H. Winston 209 

The language is no longer limited to -a lucky few. 

The Challenge of Open Systems by Carl Hewitt 223 

Current logic programming methods may be insufficient for developing the 

intelligent systems of the future. 

Vision by Dana H. Ballard and Christopher M. Brown 245 

Technology is still being challenged to create reliable real-time vision systems. 

Learning in Parallel Networks by Geoffrey E. Hinton 265 

The author presents two theories of how learning could occur 
in brain-like networks. 

Connections by lerome A. Eeldman 277 

Massively parallel computational models may simulate intelligent behavior more 
closely than models based on sequential machines. 

Reverse Engineering the Brain by lohn K. Stevens 286 

The brain's circuitry can serve as a model for silicon-based designs. 

The Technology of Expert Systems 

by Robert H. Michaelsen, Donald Michie. and Albert Boulanger 303 

There's more than one way to transplant expert knowledge to machines. 

Inside an Expert System by Beverly A. Thompson and William A. Thompson 315 

The authors trace the development of a rule-based system from index cards 
to a Pascal program. 



BY 1 L MSS\ 0160 VWi is published monthly by McGraw-Hill inc Founder lames H McCraw (I860- 1448) Executive editorial circulation and advents- 

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2 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT TINNEY 



VOLUME 10. NUMBER 4. 1985 



REVIEWS 



Introduction 334 

Reviewers Notebook by Glenn Hartwig 337 

The ITT XTRA by ]ohn D. Vnger 338 

An IBM PC-compatible system with telecommunications software. 

Insight- A Knowledge System by Bruce D'Ambrosio 345 

Software to help you build an expert system and learn about artificial 
intelligence. 

Review Feedback 348 

Readers respond to previous reviews. 

KERNEL 



Introduction 353 

Computing at Chaos Manor: Over the Moat by jerry Pournelle 355 

As construction workers descend on Chaos Manor, jerry battles the flu 
to look at more new items. 

Chaos Manor Mail conducted by \erry Pournelle 373 

Jerry's readers write, and he replies. 

BYTE West Coast Lasers. Office Publishing, and More by John Markoff and 

Phillip Robinson 379 

Our West Coast editors report on Interleaf's OPS2000 and TPS-2000 and 
on FastFinder for the Macintosh. 

BYTE U.K.: New Database Ideas by Dick Pountain 389 

I.D.E.A.S. is a commercial database-generator package in which all data items 
are related by a system of coordinates abstracted from the real world. 

BYTE Japan: The Fifth Generation in Japan by William M. Raike 401 

Our Japan correspondent takes note of the International Conference 
of Fifth Generation Computer Systems, the new Hitachi supercomputer, 
and software development in the country. 

Circuit Cellar Feedback conducted by Stew Garcia 408 

Steve answers project-related queries from readers. 




334 



EDITORIAL: GOLFERS AND HACKERS 6 

MlCROBYTES 9 

Letters 14 

Fixes and Updates 33 

Whats New 39, 440 

Ask BYTE 48 

Clubs & Newsletters 58 

Book Reviews 65 



Event Queue 83 

Whats Not 96 

Books Received 414 

Programming Insight 429 

Unclassified Ads 493 

BYTE's Ongoing Monitor Box. 
BOMB Results 494 

Reader Service 495 




353 



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SECTION ART BY DOUGLAS SMITH 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 



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Philip Lemmons 
managing editor 
Gene Smarte 
consulting editors 

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ierry pournelle 

senior technical editors 

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electronic publishing and communications 

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user news editor. east coast 

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USER NEWS EDITOR, WEST COAST 

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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 

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II 




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Inquiry 97 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 5 



EDITORIAL 



Golfers and Hackers 

It must no longer go unremarked that 
many of the criminals who threaten 
the foundations of our society are 
golfers. Golfers persist in attacking our 
personal, financial, and military 
security Many golfers, like the famous 
one caught in the act in photo 1 (Spiro 
Agnew), have been involved in extor- 
tion, bribery, or other forms of 
corruption. 

Some golfers have been known to 
hit out of bounds as a pretext for 
trespassing in residential communi- 
ties. Such forays easily turn into in- 
cidents of voyeurism and burglary. 

Violence 

Other golfers use the harmless-look- 
ing little white balls to inflict injuries 
on bystanders, propelling the danger- 
ous projectiles at speeds in excess of 
120 miles per hour. The danger of 
head injuries is obvious. Golf's care- 
less disregard for the safety of other 
people hardens our children to vio- 
lence. The idea that shouting a single, 
obscure word makes it all right to bop 
some innocent person on the head 
with a hard projectile has brought our 
society to the brink of savagery. Last 
week in a major American city a thug 
shouted "Fore!" and then mugged a 
grandmother as if it were the most 
natural thing in the world. 

Golfing Arcades 

Perhaps the most distasteful thing 
about golfers is their use in recent 
years of golfing arcades. These so- 
called "driving ranges" allow addicts 
to rent baskets containing dozens or 
even hundreds of golf balls so that the 
addicts can bombard surrounding 
land at rates previously unthinkable. 
Although the fences sometimes used 
around these golfing dens may pro- 
tect people outside from physical in- 




ife^ . 




jury the fences do nothing to stop the 
spread of the moral rot associated 
with the trancelike concentration of 
the golfer on the little white ball. That 
little ball means more to the golf ad- 
dict than honor, mother, or country. 
The money squandered at golfing 
arcades, golf courses, and pro shops 
could buy a personal computer for 
every child in America or pay off the 
national debt, depending on national 
priorities. 

National Security 
Implications 

The parliament of King lames II of 
1457 banned golf because its addicts 
neglected to practice the use of the 
crossbow, then the chief means of na- 
tional defense. Today in this country 
golfers neglect the most advanced 
weapons systems in history. This 
neglect could nullify all the technical 
progress recently seen in weapons 
research. What good is an orbital- 
beam weapon if the operator is busy 
selecting a club? 

It doesn't take a genius to see that 
avoidance of golf is a cornerstone of 
Soviet military strategy. This gives the 
Soviets a tremendous advantage in 
daytime warfare. If the Soviets launch 
an attack at 3 p.m. EST on a weekday 
in June, approximately 20 percent of 
American manpower will be useless- 
ly deployed in fairways, sandtraps, 



and rough. Even those in bunkers will 
be in the wrong kind of bunkers. At 
3 p.m. on a weekend, as much as 50 
percent of our manpower might be 
trying to avoid bogies rather than to 
shoot them down. 

Call to Action 

Because of the threats that golfers 
pose to national security and our 
moral fiber, we are proposing that all 
golfers be arrested as soon as 
possible. 

Unfair? 

If the foregoing attack on golfers 
seems unfair (and, of course, the anal- 
ogy is not perfect), it is little more so 
than the attack in the general press 
on hackers of another kind— comput- 
er hackers. Some national publica- 
tions have used the term "hacker" in- 
correctly as a synonym for "criminal." 
Hackers are people who play with 
computers at a technical level be- 
cause they enjoy doing so. There are 
many thousands of hackers in North 
America. A few hackers use their com- 
puter skills for pranks, and fewer still 
use their skills to commit crimes. But 
the chances are excellent that far 
more hackers are helping build 
defenses around databases than try- 
ing to penetrate them. If even one 
percent of hackers started trying to in- 
vade our databases, problems would 
be far more serious than those sen- 
sationalized in the general press. 

It wasn't being a golfer that got 
Spiro Agnew into trouble. Just being 
a hacker won't get anyone into trou- 
ble, either. Hackers are as entitled to 
the presumption of innocence as 
golfers and other common special- 
interest groups. Hackers are also en- 
titled to the continued correct use of 
the authentic, distinctive and color- 
ful name that they gave themselves. 
—Phil Lemmons, Editor in Chief 



5YTE • APRIL 1985 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 7 



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(609) 683-1660. Telex. 821402 PGS PRIN. (800) 221-1490 Ext 204 



IBM PC, PC XT, and PC AT are registered trademarks o! International Business Machines, Inc. 



8 BYTE 



APRIL I985 



Inquiry 4I3 



MICROBYTES 



Staff-written highlights of late developments in the microcomputer industry. 



Macintosh Users Get IBM PC Emulator 

Dayna Communications, Salt Lake City, UT, has announced MacCharlie, a hardware-and- 
software system that allows Macintosh users to run IBM PC software. Two hardware com- 
ponents are included: one adds 10 function keys and an 18-key numeric keypad/cursor pad 
to the Macintosh keyboard; the other has one or two 5 '/4-inch disk drives, memory, an IBM- 
compatible ROM chip, and an 8088 processor, as well as serial and parallel ports and a 
bus-extender port for an optional expansion chassis. Also included is a Macintosh program 
that handles all keyboard and display processing— and it can still be used to access the 
Mac's desk accessories from within IBM PC applications, MacCharlie emulates all features of 
the IBM monochrome graphics card except for light-pen support. 

The Macintosh can be set atop the matching MacCharlie unit, which adds four inches to 
the Macintosh's width and one inch to its height. The Macintosh keyboard fits into the 
keyboard extender; the numeric keypad can be used as a standard Macintosh numeric 
keypad when in Macintosh mode. The bus-extender port allows use of an optional expan- 
sion chassis so that IBM cards can be installed; with an additional cable, IBM's expansion 
chassis can be used. With one 5 '/4-inch disk drive and 256K bytes of memory, MacCharlie is 
$1195; with two drives and 640K, it's $1895. 

New Mac Products Shown 

Several companies unveiled new products for the Macintosh at the MacWorld Expo in San 
Francisco. While many new software titles were demonstrated, memory-expansion and hard- 
disk-drive exhibits drew much attention. 

Micro Conversion, Arlington, TX, and Levco Enterprises, Del Mar, CA, both offer complete 
512K-byte upgrades for $400, including installation, and also sell uninstalled kits. Levco also 
sells a $60 kit with all necessary parts except the 2 56K-byte chips. 

In addition to already-announced hard-disk products, new drives from Paradise Systems 
Inc. and Micro-Design were shown in prototype form. Not surprisingly, most exhibitors used 
hard disks and 512K-byte Macs to demonstrate their software. 

Hayden Software showed Ensemble, an integrated package for the 128K-byte Mac. Data- 
base, spreadsheet, graphics, and text-processing features are included in the $300 program, 
which was developed in France. A number of new database programs were also exhibited 
at the show. 

Paragon Courseware, Del Mar, CA, offers two font sets: a $50 Scientific Typing font and a 
$100 Electronic Circuits font. 

Micro Focus Inc. now offers MacCOBOL, a COBOL development system. 

Microsoft Releases Its Own C Compiler 

Microsoft has released Microsoft C version 3.0, which replaces the Lattice-developed C 
previously sold by Microsoft for the IBM PC. Microsoft's C compiler provides file-sharing 
and record-locking features for use in network environments; a separate Windows Toolkit 
will help C programmers develop applications to run under Microsoft Windows. Microsoft 
says that source and object code can be linked to run directly under MS-DOS or XENIX 
without modification. Microsoft C is $395. 

New LCD Portables Use Backlit Display 

Zenith Data Systems is expected to introduce a lap-top portable computer with a backlit 
liquid-crystal display (LCD). The 16-pound Z-175 will include one or two 5!4-inch disk drives, 
256K bytes of RAM, and an 80C88 processor for less than $3000. 

To counter the viewing angle and lighting problems caused by LCDs, Morrow Design also 
changed the 16-line by 80-character display on its Pivot computer, switching to backlit LCDs 
rather than relying on room light, despite the extra power consumed by the backlighting. 



{continued} 
APRIL 1985 'BYTE 9 



Proteon Adds 80-megabit-per-second Network 

Proteon, which markets the ProNET token-passing star/ring hybrid local-area network, now 
offers a faster network. While ProNET used a 10-megabit-per-second data rate, ProNET-80 
transfers information at 80 megabits per second. Proteon expects it to be used in applica- 
tions using multiple minicomputers and mainframes or in connecting graphics workstations 
with large file sizes. The network will be available for Unibus and Multibus systems for 
about $8000 per node. 

Fntel Will Sell CalTeeh's Hypercube Multiprocessor Computer 

Intel has licensed the hypercube computer design from the California Institute of 
Technology and will sell a computer based on that multiprocessor architecture. The com- 
puter consists of a multiprocessor cube and a cube manager. The cube includes 32, 64, or 
128 computational nodes, each of which includes an 80286 processor, an 80287 math 
coprocessor, and 512K bytes of memory. Each node in the cube can communicate with five 
adjacent nodes and with the cube manager through 10-megabit-per-second communications 
channels. The cube manager is an Intel 286/310 microcomputer with 2 megabytes of RAM 
and a 40-megabyte hard-disk drive. Intel claims a performance range from 2.5 to 10 million 
floating-point operations per second with an efficiency of 80 to 99 percent. Prices range 
from $150,000 to $520,000. 

Torus Prepares to Launch LAN Software 

Torus Systems Inc., Redwood City. CA, plans to introduce icon-based user-interface software 
for IBM PC network environments this month. The product will be based on Icon, the net- 
work software it says it has been selling since July in England for systems using 3Coms 
Ethernet network cards. 

The program will include intranetwork electronic mail, telecommunications, file locking and 
sharing, and other network software features; users will also be able to run standard MS- 
DOS programs under the environment, either from local disks or from a file server. 

NANOBYTES 



While announcing the Macintosh Office in late January (see February BYTE, page 120), 
Apple also announced the Macintosh XL, which is simply the Lisa renamed. . . . Software 
Publishing Corporation has added XMODEM file-transfer and remote computer access 
features to its $140 pfs:Access program. . . . Kensington Microware, which advertised its 
Quick Cursor and Printer Buffer for Apples Macintosh last year, has canceled development 
of those products. The company will continue to sell other "Maccessories. ". , . Mostek, 
Toshiba, Hitachi, and AT&T's Bell Labs presented papers on CMOS 1 -megabit RAM chips 
at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (1SSCC) in February; IBM, NEC 
Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and Fujitsu discussed NMOS I-megabit RAMs. Image-sensor chips 
were discussed by Mitsubishi and Sharp, and engineers from AT&T's Bell Labs discussed 
the development of a 32-bit floating-point digital-signal-processing chip. . . . Mother Jones' 
Son's Software, Reno, NV, is selling M), a set of background utility programs. In addition to 
redefining the PC's keys, MJ expands the IBM's keyboard buffer from 16 to 1000 keys, 
permits the cursor speed to be changed, and includes a password protection option. M) 
costs $30, or $70. including source code. . . . Digital Equipment Corporation acknowledged 
in February that it had stopped manufacturing the Rainbow personal computer but said it 
will continue to ship from inventory and plans to announce a new version later this year. . . . 
Syntech, Canoga Park, CA, has announced a MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) 
adapter card for IBM, Apple, and Commodore computers. For the Apple or Commodore, 
the card is $100; for the IBM PC, it's $195. . . . The Library Corporation, Washington, DC, is 
selling a complete CD ROM system for the IBM PC, including a disc with records for a 
million English-language books, for $2930. . . . Corvus Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, has 
replaced its line of Omnidrive hard-disk drives with a single model that can be used with 
IBM PC; Apple II, III, and Macintosh; DEC Rainbow; and Zenith Z-100 computers. Corvus 
also dropped prices by about 30 percent. An Il-megabyte drive is now $1995. . . . Hammer 
Computer Systems Inc., Larkspur, CA, announced E-Z-DOS-IT, a $200 program that allows 

up to eight MS-DOS programs to execute concurrently Gold Hill Computers has 

enhanced its Golden Common LISP interpreter and will also offer a GC LISP compiler in 
the summer. A large-memory-model version will also be available for the IBM PC AT. 



10 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



TheTI855is 

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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 



interact with a Genius 




SUPER XT SYSTEM PLUS* 

Ultra-High resolution color card. 

Ultra-High (720x400) resolution color monitor. 

Gives excellent text resolution. 

10x16 character cell. 

SUPER XT OFFICE SYSTEM PLUS® 

TTL monochrome monitor. 

Gives you easy-on-the-eyes viewing. 



SUPER XT COLOR SYSTEM PLUS® 

High resolution color card and color monitor (640x200). 
16 colors. 

SUPER XT STRRTER SYSTEM PLUS® 

Composite monochrome monitor. 

Includes color graphics card. 

Gives you flexibility to run color and monochrome 

software. 





12 



B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 417 for Dealers. Inquiry 418 for End Users. 



... and feel the Power! 



SUPERPOWER 135 

Hard Disk ready +12V at 
4.5A max +5V at ISA max 
Same dimension and plug 
compatible W/IBM PC/XT. 
3 Power outputs for 2 
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KEYBOARD 

IBM PC ; XT Plug 

compatible 

Corrected (left) 'shift" 

key 

Color compatible 

W/IBM case 



SUPER 
MOTHERBOARD 

Single layer double 

sided board 

Same dimensions as IBM 

motherboard 

Up to 256K Ram on-board 

memory 

8 I/O slots 



MULTIFUNCTION 
CARD 

Serial, Parallel, Game ports 
and Clock/Calendar 
W/memory expansion of 
added 384K 

RAM disk and print spooler 
software included 



1AXAN 555' 
COLOR CARD 

10x16 character cell to give 
the best text resolution in 
color (720x400) 
Graphic resolution 
(640x200) 
Operates Taxan 440" 
monitor 





\\ ■ , 




SUPER 
CONTROLLER 

Controls up to 4 Floppy 
drives Comes W/Cables 
for 2 Drives 










SUPER DISK 
+ 1/0 

Disk Controller Parallel 
Serial ports 
Saves a slot in 
Motherboard 



SUPERSEVEN + 

Disk Controller and cable 
Clock/calendar Parallel, 
Serial and Game ports. 
RAM Disk emulator. 
Super Spooler software 



SUPERBUFFER + 

Does not use User's 
memory. Can be used as 
regular printer port W/O 
64K buffer memory 
installed. 

Second parallel port 
included. Configurable as 
LPT1 or LPT2. Use 
Computer and print 
at the same time 

SUFERCOLOR 
CARD 

16 Colors on medium 

resolution 

16K display memory 

Composite output 

W/RGB 








SUPERBOX 

Fully BUS compatible 

Adds 10 slots. 135 W Power 

supply for Hard Disk and 

Add-Ons 

External color same as IBM 




HARD DISK 
CONTROLLER 

Controls up to 2 hard disks 
Configurable for 5, 10, 20 
and 33 Mb hard disks 




HARD DISK 
ASSEMBDT 

10 Mb formatted Fixed disk 
5 Mb or 10 Mb formatted 
removable cartridge 
Unlimited storage 
Bootable from either fixed 
or removable hard disk 



TAPE BACKUP 

Backs up 10 Mb within 3 

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Uses regular floppy 

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SUPERMONO 
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720x348 resolution 
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Printer port 




The Ultimate in PC/XT compatibles and peripherals! 



The Super XT Plus Series" computer offers 
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Standard features on all Super XT Pins 
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IBM PC/XT is a registered trademark of International Business Machines, Corp. Taxan is a registered trademark of Taxan Corp 



SEE US AT COMDEX-LOS ANGELES 



* 1985 Supercomputer, Inc 

DEALER AND OEM INQUIRES INVITED 

FAX 213/532-6342 
TELEX 3719484 SUPER 

Super XT System Plus; Color System Plus; Office System Plus; and Starter 
System Plus are registered trademarks of Super Computer, Inc. 

APRIL 1985 'BYTE 13 



LETTERS 



Covering Advanced Systems 

I have now been using a Fujitsu Micro 1 6s 
(8086 processor) for the past eight 
months, and I don't know how I got this 
far without some kind of micro, I am 
already planning for my next system. 
which will have either a 68020, a 16032, 
or a 32032 processor running UNIX. 

Along with Jay Steinbrunn (Letters, 
August 1984, page 23}, I too would like 
to see BYTE raise its sights and start to 
cover this future marketplace. Tell us 
what's happening out there so I can start 
putting money into my "purchase" ac- 
count. I've seen a few inklings of this ad- 
vanced micro technology at some of the 
shows, namely Saber Technology's use of 
the NS32032. 

There are probably more of us out there 
that are interested in these advanced 
systems than you realize. 

William H. Mestler 
Tarzana, CA 

Phil Lemmons replies: 

We will keep an eye out for real 32-bit 

microcomputers at reasonable prices. 

An Apple for BYTE 

1 want to compliment you on your special 
articles on the Apple computers (The BYTE 
Guide to the Apple Personal Computers, 
December 1984). The length of the articles 
showed that your company spent many 
hours choosing articles that would be en- 
joyed by the majority of readers. The ar- 
ticles were not only enjoyable, but they 
were also very informative. They showed 
an extreme amount of quality, which was 
the biggest impression I had after reading 
them. I commend your writers and com- 
pany on a job well done. 

Kevin Hoekman 
Lakewood. CA 

Where Credit Is Due 

I have just read your December 1984 
issue. I was impressed by "High-Speed 
Dial-up Modems'' by Kim Maxwell (page 
179). I found the article very informative 
and timely. Kim Maxwell's writing style is 
always very informative. He also manages 



to keep the reader interested throughout 
any articles he writes. 

But I must challenge the description of 
Mr, Maxwell's accomplishments. Mr. Max- 
well is the current president of Racal-Vadic 
He also holds a philosophy degree from 
Stanford. The remainder of the descrip- 
tion is not correct. 

Racal-Vadic was founded in April 1969 
by seven individuals: Ted Saunders, Bob 
Stires, Jay Tiitt, Tom McShane, Jim Barrick, 
Larry Taylor, and Kim Maxwell. The com- 
pany was then known as Vadic. The ideas 
and circuits used to start Vadic were Ted 
Saunders's. 

The very first full-duplex 1200-bps 
modem was invented and designed by 
lohn A. C. Bingham in 1972 during his 
employment at Vadic, Bingham must be 
given credit where credit is due. Mr. 
Bingham's talents and contributions need 
to be recognized. 

This is not meant to take anything away 
from Kim Maxwell. It is just to set the 
record straight. Mr. Maxwell's contribu- 
tions to the world of data communications 
are numerous, too numerous to list. He 
has peers in this group, but very few. 

An an engineer and investor at Vadic 
from November 1969 to November 1984, 
1 saw most of the events during that period 
and was party to many. I also worked for 
both men and admire their talents and 
contributions to data communications. 

DUANE MARCROFT 

San Carlos, CA 

WordStar s .BAK 
Extension 

I read Vincent Alfieri's "WordStar as a Pro- 
gramming Tool" (November 1984, page 
505) with some enjoyment. 1 have long 
used WordStar for both program develop- 
ment and correspondence, and I agree 
with Dr. Alfieri's verdict that it is a program 
hard to beat in power and versatility. Even 
after several years of using WordStar, in- 
cluding writing patches and modifications 
to the program itself, it still manages to 
surprise me with its power. 

1 know that the problem that Dr. Alfieri 
has experienced with limited disk space 
is frustrating; I used to have the same 
problem myself. While my ultimate solu- 



tion was to move to 8-inch disks, there are 
more immediately applicable fixes. The 
problem stems from the fact that Word- 
Star saves the old version of an edited file. 
changing the file extension to .BAK, Hav- 
ing rescued program files from otherwise 
hopeless oblivion by the use of this fea- 
ture, 1 am quite willing to put up with its 
rather extravagant use of disk space. 

It is an almost undocumented feature of 
WordStar that allows you to specify a disk 
drive to receive all work files and the final 
edited file other than the drive on which 
the original file resides. This can be done 
in either of two ways. From the Opening 
Menu, simply choose "D" or "N," as ap- 
propriate, and when asked for the name 
of the file to edit, reply with the filename, 
but follow it with a space and a drive 
designator. For example, to edit the file 
TEST. DOC, which resides on drive B:, and 
save the final, edited version on drive A:, 
answer the "Name of file to edit?" ques- 
tion with BTEST.DOC A:. When you end 
the editing session, you will be left with 
the file TEST. BAK on drive B:, and the file 
TESTDOC on drive A:. For subsequent 
editing, it will be necessary to use drive 
A: as the source drive and B: as the 
destination. The second way to invoke this 
feature is from the CP/M (or MS-DOS) 
command line. To accomplish the same 
task using this method, simply type WS 
BTEST.DOC A: at the A> operating- 
system prompt. You can change the mode 
(document or nondocument) to which 
WordStar will default using this method by 
using WINSTALL.COM. 

If this still leaves you with insufficient 
room on the A: drive, WordStar can be run 
without the file WSMSGS.OVR on the 

{continued) 



LETTERS POLICY: To be considered for pub- 
lication, a letter must be typed double-spaced on 
one side of the paper and must include your name 
and address. Comments and ideas should be ex- 
pressed as clearly and concisely as possible. 
Listings and tables may be printed along with 
a letter if they are short and legible. 

Because BYTE receives hundreds of letters each 
month, not all of them can be published, letters 
will not be returned to authors. Generally it takes 
four months from the time BYTE receives a let- 
ter until it is published. 



14 



B YTE • APRIL 1985 




Hard Drives 



You Can Forget About 





The nicest thing about May nard's hard drives is their 
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nind on your work, not your hardware. Unsurpassed 
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/ou an awful lot to forget about. 





Internal, external, or portable 
hard drives from 10 to 30MB. 




Maynard Electronics 

430 E. SEMORAN BLVD., CASSELBERRY, FL 32707 
305/331-6402 

Inquiry 253 



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COD 



LETTERS 



system disk. All messages, including 
menus, will appear as @@@@ in the up- 
per left-hand corner of the screen, but if 
you have sufficient knowledge of Word- 
Star's command structure, that shouldn't 
be more than an inconvenience. 

As I mentioned, this feature is not well 
documented and, I must admit, it is of 
limited usefulness, except in certain situa- 
tions when it makes the impossible 
possible, 

Nick Burkitt 
Long Beach, CA 

As someone who uses WordStar profes- 
sionally on nearly a daily basis, both at 
work (as a technical writer) and at home 
(as a freelance writer), I was flabbergasted 
at several pieces of misinformation and 
bad advice offered by Dr. Vincent Alfieri 
in 'WordStar as a Programming Tool." 

Late in the article, Dr. Alfieri describes 
WordStar's "strange habit of keeping a 
backup file every time you edit an existing 
file. This means, in effect, that you must 
maintain a great deal of disk space for the 
necessary backup files." 

So backup files (denoted by the .BAK 
extension) are bad, since they eat up disk 
space. Or are they? 

Dr. Al fieri 's attitude toward the WordStar 
backup procedure is perplexing, espe- 
cially since one can justify WordStar's 
backup procedure by simply providing a 
better solution to a problem "solved" by 
Dr. Alfieri early on in the article. There, he 
recommends that, if you have recently 
saved and accidentally delete an impor- 
tant line of code, you can use the "KQ 
(quit without saving file) command. He is 
silent on what to do if you haven't, which 
is frequently the case if you are on a roll. 

However, thanks to WordStar's backup 
procedure, the situation isn't bad at all, 
even if you've got an hour's work behind 
you in the current file with no saves at all. 
All you really have to do is use ~ KD (quit 
and save file). Following this, you will find 
that WordStar has created a file with a 
BAK extension on the disk. 

You can then edit this file (after chang- 
ing or removing the .BAK extension). This 
allows you to find the missing text and 
block write it to disk. You can then reedit 
the original file, find the location of the 
missing text, and read it off the disk. This 
procedure is quick, easy, and involves no 
loss of text. 

But even WordStar with its powerful 
backup feature cannot defeat those who 
work to defeat it, as Dr. Alfieri does when 
he suggests using files distinguished solely 

[continued} 



16 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 150 



ProModem 1200... HOT* LI ME 



Our ProModem 1200 Makes 
Smart Modems Look Dumb 




ProModem 1200 

(RS-232) 



Send Or Receive 50 Pages Of Text 
Without Tying Up Your Computer 



COMPUTER 
TURNED OFF 




No wonder Smart Modems, Cats, and Maxwells 
cringe when compared to our $495 ProModem 
1200, an expandable 1200/300 baud modem 
for use with all personal computers. It costs 
less, but is smarter than the rest. 

And when you add our $99 Communica- 
tions Buffer and Alphanumeric Display options, 
ProModem 1200 becomes a veritable genius! 

Imagine, you unplug your computer, take it 
home for the weekend, and while you're gone, 
ProModem 1200 answers the phone, collects 
messages up to 50 pages long, sends out 
electronic mail, and displays all events with the 
exact time of each. Thanks to ProModem 1200, 
expensive, hard-to-use communications soft- 
ware isn't needed. The communications is in the 
modem, and electronic mail becomes aback- 
ground function, where it belongs. 

A 



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Our Communications Buffer is a 4 by 6 card that 
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ProModem 1200 contains a battery backed-up real-time 

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APRIL 1985 "BYTE 17 



Inquiry 135 



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LETTERS 



in terms of extensions (he suggests "P.I." 
"P.2." "P.3." etc.). Yes. in this case WordStar 
will keep only one backup for each of 
those files. That's great, if you're sure you'll 
never need a backup of any but the most 
recently edited file. I, for one, am not so 
confident. 

Obviously. I think there are good 
reasons for backup files. Dr. Alfieri 
reminds us to keep separate backup files, 
but I know from nearly 10 years of work- 
ing with computers and six years of work- 
ing with WordStar that most people forget 
to back up their work, especially if they 
haven't lost any work lately. We WordStar 
users tend to be less sorry than most. 

Finally, I am puzzled by Dr. Alfieri's con- 
tention that "You can actually get more 
pages on a disk with many small files than 
with one large file." This isn't entirely true, 
of course, except during an actual editing 
session. 

Every file has overhead, and many sys- 
tems allocate disk space in 2K-byte in- 
crements, including a minimum 2K-byte 
file size. Thus, it's easy to eat up disk space 
by having numerous files with somewhere 
between a few bytes and 2K bytes of un- 
used bytes per file Let's say that it's IK 
byte on the average. 

Then, if you take our example l80K-byte 
disk again and put 30 files of nominally 
4K bytes each on it, it adds up to 120K 
bytes used' and 60 K bytes "free." The 
truth, however, is that about 30K bytes of 
disk space is eaten up in overhead. That's 
about 15 pages of text! If your system 
allocates in lK-byte increments, that's still 
I5K bytes! 

When you're editing a backed-up file. 
WordStar can require about three times 
the capacity of the file on the disk (one 
old backup, one working backup, and the 
file being edited). This means that on a 
disk with I80K bytes (formatted), you 
might want to avoid editing a file of 55K 
bytes or greater, especially if you expect 
to be expanding it by much. 

The best solution is probably to work 
on one disk and keep a separate disk for 
file saves. If you save to this disk after each 
edit, then you can delete the .BAK files 
as you go. meaning that on a 180K-byte 
disk, you can safely edit a much larger file 
of 80K bytes or more. 

Thomas H. Hunscher 
Tigard, OR 

News for Sorcerer Owners 

May I suggest that BYTE try to mention 
the many orphans that have arisen in the 

[continued] 



18 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 220 



AST makes modems Short 'n Sweet 



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The Reach! half-card design 
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So it makes a much nicer travel- 
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BYTE 



10 



Quick doesrit have to 

Before Microsoft Word you had to choose between 
quick and clean. Producing professional looking docu- 
ments meant going through draft after draft after draft 
after draft. 

The new Microsoft Word is different. You don't have 
to practice to make perfect. You can use the full power 
of the IBM" PC to eliminate the drafts. And give your ideas 
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With Word, what you see on the screen is what you'll see on the page. 
You can preview and design documents. And instantly see the effect 
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and the printer.) Now you can breathe vitality into blocks of lifeless text. 




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>uty ('man span bathtub b»xd»s? 

■/acwJNI divajr» for laying und*rvatar oa»l« 
Aimmmiit-lma or tmti a* a j»ar»an*nt tr-*" J 




titov-tomkter r l»-< 



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Attachaa to chair a or dining- 



^{1} J*vai2aJbl# i» *&•#**•* and "after" vara ion*; plmmmm «peclf4« 
£#£/ M*U*ftl« In mvky Mountain or Alpina atyia. 



<£^p0«j*M>' -^ 



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TOO TAU. TOYS 
NEW PRODUCTS 



ci.mh.fift Sis* K««t 



const* ueritm cha«k 

«*f«« *eec**wry for aft* Too T«<7 skyscraper 
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an be »r«at»i«iOTe<S to (serfo»t» a vmtiety eC 



* cftwpiex 



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kit ha* » i«id«, , ! " f *** ** sla * 

Z a * ** ** •"* •» • *«««* tea* 



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^T*rZS WUh *° ***»*■ ******* - 

chairs or di»m*-r«o«> wtottt whJ| ^^ 



tattgattw in "faster** Mi -I**" *«MSi™ 



Their first draft vs. our first draft. 



20 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



be dirty* 




Highlight pithy 
phrases, flag impor- 
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superscript an j sahsaipt Qyj Q more hieroglyphic ▼Todes.) 

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How do we get higher performance out of the PC? Simple, our 
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So, if you want to clean up your act, act quick. Call (800) 426-9400. 
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purchased on or before August 31. 19^. 




LETTERS 



computer field. There are many micros 
that have no support now. and users who 
still have them are looking for help. 

Ah, nostalgia! Remember Superbrain, 
TRS Model 1, IMSAI, Videobrain, and 
Exidy Sorcerer 9 Some people still have 
them but think they are frozen in time. 

For some machines, that is not so. 

The Exidy Sorcerer was still being made 
in 1984, under license in Holland. And 
there are still many fan magazines with 
software and hardware notes being 
published. 

For the Exidy Sorcerer here are some 
of the magazines being published. (Write 
for subscription rates and possibility of 
back issues.) 

European Sorcerer Club 

Back issues only 

Died with issue 4 3 in June 1984 

Index in issue 26 

Colin Morle 

32 Watchyard Lane 

Formby 

Near Liverpool L37 3JU 

England 

Sorcerer Group International 

c/o Don Gottwald 

POB 33 

Madison Heights, MI 48071 

U.S.A. 

Back issues from Gottwald at: 

19967 Rosin Dr. 

Mt. Clemens, Ml 48044 

U.S.A. (about $18 per volume for vols. 

2 to 5) 

now Sorcerer Group International 

(8 times a year) 
Tommy Stokes (or Ed King) 
Route 1. Box 121 
Everton, AR 72633 
U.S.A. 



ISIS (12 a year) 

c/o Maurice Dow 

84 Camberley Crescent 

Brampton, Ontario L6V 3L4 

Canada 

Sorcerer User Group 

of South Australia (12 a year) 

c/o Don Ide 

14 Scott Rd. 

Newton, South Australia 5074 

Australia (index in issue 51) 

Exidy Sorcerer Gebruikers Group 

(6 a year) 
Published in Dutch with full English 

cover-to-cover translation a month 

later 
Index in issue 1 5 

Redactie ESGG 

P/a Postbus 510 
NL-1000 Amsterdam 
The Netherlands 

Sorcerer User Group Schweiz 

Monthly/in German 

CH 3038 Kirchlindach 
Switzerland (index in issue 50) 

Sorcerer Computer Users 
of New Zealand 

Monthly, some Sorcerer material 

c/o Selwyn Arrow 
POB 6210 

Auckland, New Zealand 

I won't give prices since they will change 
and many of the above don't know rates 
to the U.S. since no one has asked before. 

Here are some software sources for the 
Sorcerer that you might want to keep on 
file: 



Roger Hagan 

1146 Fairview Ave. North 
Seattle. WA 98109 

System Software 

1 Kent St. 

Bicton. Western Australia 6157 

Australia 

Nigel Yeo 

24 Bodmin Ave. 
Macclesfield. Cheshire 
England 

Calcom BV 

Nijverheidsstraat 22 
NL-2802 AL Gouda 
The Netherlands 

Softdeal 

Postbus 85 
NL-1135 ZJ Edam 
The Netherlands 



Computer Collect ief 

Amste! 312 (t.o. Carre) 
NL-1017 AP Amsterdam 
The Netherlands 

And some hardware help, firmware, and 
repair services: 

B |. (Bob) Freeman 

414 Olive Way 

Seattle. WA 99202 

or 

POB 12 58 

Seattle, WA 98111-12 58 

U.S.A. 

Ion Weather 

Morristown Municipal Airport 
Morristown. NJ 07960 
U.S.A. 



Sorcerer Computers Users 
of Australia 

(12 a year/Airmail) 

Box 2402 

Melbourne, Victoria 3001 

Australia 

Southern California 
Sorcerer Users Group 

(4 to 6 a year casually) 
c/o Cary E. Stewart 
529 South Beachwood Dr. 
Burbank. CA 91506 

U.S.A. 



Arrington (Ensign) Software 

7337 Northview 
Boise. ID 87304 
U.S.A. 

Howard Arrington 

Suite E, 2312 North Cole Rd. 

Boise ID 87304 

U.S.A. (This is an old address.) 

COMTRO Software Development 

Rec. Bonsel Str. 10 
NL-6433 EP Hoensbroek 
The Netherlands 



Tercentennial Technical 

70 Tercentennial Dr. 
Billerica. MA 01821 

U.S.A. 

South Valley Electronics Inc. 

Suite E. 2110 Walsh Ave. 
Santa Clara. CA 95050 
U.S.A. 

Mentzer Electronics 

590 South Hill Boulevard 
Daly City CA 94014 

U.S.A. 



22 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



LETTERS 



The Brothers Van Montfort 

(Gebroeders van Montfort) 
Smedestraat 13 
NL-6411 CR Heerien 
The Netherlands 



Daniel Say 
Vancouver, BC Canada 



Apple II Blues 



I happened on Mr. Dennis Doms's letter 
("A Call for Better Apple Support," 
September 1984, page 14) and but for 
near-identical circumstances, I would have 
dismissed it as one of those individual 
quirks in product support. I fully endorse 
Mr. Doms's comments. His perceptiveness 
of the ProDOS documentation problem is 
particularly commendable when one con- 
siders the fact that he is experienced in 
DOS 3.3! 

In early March of this year our 
information-processing group decided 
that a small "user-friendly" micro might 
provide quick turnaround for some of our 
project record-keeping applications. 
Although the senior program manager 
was a Kaypro owner, he carefully avoided 
imposing his own preference on the 
organization. An Apple 11+ owner made 
a seemingly sound recommendation that 
we get an Apple lie with duodisk and a 
small dot-matrix printer. 

Two days later, the Apple He arrived with 
its display, an Epson printer, and the 
duodisk. VisiCalc and two PFS packages 
also were provided to get things started. 
A seeming ton of books accompanied the 
units, A quick pilot run with VisiCalc and 
PFS was made, and a short training ses- 
sion was held for floor engineers and proj- 
ect managers. 

People experienced losses of whole 
files, mutilation of data, and I/O errors 
using PFS. The possibility of human error 
was explored, and new data backup pro- 
cedures were instituted. Repair of the 
duodisk decreased the variety of I/O 
errors but did not eliminate them. Sub- 
stitution of the duodisk with two stand- 
alone drives did not help. The Apple 
technician blamed the problem on PFS. 
The salesman who had originally sold us 
the Apple and the software then sold us 
Appleworks. The users read Appleworks 
documentation, more training sessions 
were held, new files were established, data 
was reentered. Within a day there were 
more I/O errors and losses of data 
reported. The Apple dealer then replaced 
the main logic board and again worked on 

{continued) 



More terminals 



without more computer 



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Inquiry 41 APRIL 1985 • B Y T E 23 



LETTERS 



the duodisk. This finally solved the prob- 
lem (both Appleworks and PFS work we!! 
now). 

A task request arrived on my desk to 
write some printer set-up utilities and a 
project accounting package for the Apple. 
Coming from a CP/M-86 TRSDOS and 
1BM-VS background, 1 didn't instantly see 
the relationship between the Apple DOS 
and BASIC. The undocumented "loading 



of Integer BASIC was disturbing. My first 
effort on the printer routines worked well 
enough (after I found that I/O had to be 
directed to physical card slots and that the 
Apple did not support logical devices') 
Since the design for the project account- 
ing task involved multiple files and several 
large arrays. I broke out the books. 

As in Dennis Doms's case, we had 
received a ProDOS users manual and an 



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Apple He owners manual. These had no 
substantive information that documented 
the machine or Apple's software. The 
paper quality was nice; the indexes and 
tables of contents had errors. The ProDOS 
manual talked about differences from DOS 
3.3 and seemed aimed at people familiar 
with Apple DOS. The ton of books also 
included books for the 80-column card. 
the Apricot printer card, a duodisk 
manual, a pamphlet for the display, and 
several excellent manuals for VisiCalc. PFS. 
and the Epson printer. 

I called our dealer and was told that we 
deserved a ProDOS Programmer's Manual 
since it had been out of stock when we 
bought the machine. He did not have one 
but would special-order one for us. I de- 
scribed my needs for documentation and 
was told I would need the Applesoft and 
DOS 3.3 manuals and that these were 
extra-cost items. 1 was told to ignore all 
references to Integer BASIC since it was 
an "archaic tongue" and no documenta- 
tion was in print for it. (Undocumented 
modules of an operating system bother 
me!) The pricing was confused, but a total 
of $70 plus tax finally went on our pur- 
chase order. We soon received a bill. Two 
trips to the dealer and multiple phone 
calls over a six-week period failed to pro- 
duce the manuals. There was talk of them 
being in a warehouse, then being back- 
ordered from Apple, then being out of 
print. Finally, with a Friday promise that 
they would be mailed on Monday. Ac- 
counting paid the bill. Two weeks later the 
dealer produced an explanation that the 
required manuals were unavailable from 
Apple and there was no projected delivery 
date. 

TWo months after the first phone call 
about documentation, our "free" ProDOS 
Programmer's Manual arrived. It was much 
as Mr. Doms describes— dependent on the 
DOS 3.3 and Applesoft documentation. 
The senior program manager visited the 
Apple dealer and with some hostility of- 
fered an invitation to small-claims court. 
The salesman then gave us his personal 
copies of the DOS 3.3 and Applesoft 
manuals. We then considered that the pur- 
chase order had been filled! 

Our company's purchasing agent will en- 
sure that no more business is directed to 
the Apple dealer who sold us the He. 
Apple's viability in the microcomputer 
business is doubted by every engineer, 
project manager, and technician who has 
been associated with our He. We now have 
three more Kaypro owners. At the office 
I'm pleased by the Displaywriter with its 

[continue^ 



24 BYTE* APRII 



198^ 



Inquiry 35 1 



If you don't have a 

Hercules Graphics Card, you could 

end up looking like this: 



"I know, because one day it hap- 
pened to me . . . 

"I was running some routine 
tests on a non-Hercules mono- 
chrome graphics card when I 
was struck by a severe case 
of low resolutionitis. I'm the 
president of Hercules and 
that's me exhibiting the 
symptoms of the disease 
in its advanced stages. Not 
a pretty sight, is it? 

"What causes low res- 
olutionitis? Experts point 
to ordinary monochrome 
graphics cards with 
coarse, hard-to-read 
graphics. A bad case of eyestrain may 
develop if action is not taken immediately. 

"Fortunately for me, a Hercules Graphics 
Card was nearby. A quick change brought 
soothing 720 x 348 graphics. That's twice 
the resolution of ordinary 640 x 200 graph- 
ics cards. 

"Which means better graphics for 
Lotus™ 1-2-3™ Symphony" Framework," 
pfs:Graph," Microsoft* Chart and Word, 
SuperCalc3; AutoCacT," and dozens of 
other programs. 

"Including Microsoft Flight Simulator, 
now Hercules compatible! 

"Oh, and don't forget that a parallel 
printer port is standard on the Hercules 
Graphics Card, not an extra cost option. 

"Now, if you're worried about buying 
a new product that hasn't had all the bugs 




worked out, relax. Hercules has 
sold more monochrome graphics 
cards for the IBM PC,XT™ and AT" 
than anyone else in the world. 

"So . . . you're convinced that 
you should buy a Hercules 
Graphics Card. Now, steer 
clear of cheap imitations. 
You may save a few bucks, 
but you won't get all of 
these five essential features 
which only Hercules has: 

"1) A safety switch that 
helps prevent damage to 
your monitor, 2) the 
ability to keep an IBM 
or Hercules Color Card 
in your system, 3) the ability to use the PC's 
BASIC to do graphics, 4) a Hercules de- 
signed chip that eliminates 30% of the parts 
that can go wrong, and 5) a two year warran- 
ty, because we think reliability is something 
you should deliver and not just talk about." 
Call 1-800-532-0600 Ext 408 for the 
name of the Hercules dealer nearest you 
and we'll rush you our free info kit. 




Hercules. 

We're strong on graphics. 



Address: 2550 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 Ph: 540-6000 Telex: 754063 Trademark/Owners: Hercules/ Hercules Computer Tech; IBM, XT, AT/ IBM; Lotus 1-2-3, 
Symphony /Lotus Development; Framework/Ashton-Tate; Microsoft /Microsoft; pfs: Graph /Soft ware Publishing; SuperCalc3/Soreim-IUS; AutoCad/AutoDesk. 



Inquiry 183 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 25 



LETTERS 



p-System. I am quite happy with my 
TRS-80 at home. Recent clamorings by my 
offspring for Macintoshes coincided with 
the lie problems. Both kids and their 
friends understand why I hesitated then 
made another choice for them. 

This is my first experience with an Apple. 
I have no personal need to make it more 
detailed or extended in time. I find the 
documentation to be shallow, the I/O im- 
plementation crude (even when measured 
against 1980 standards), and the service 
haphazard, i more carefully assess what 
Apple owners and users have to say about 
their machines. 

My feelings might not be quite so strong 
if only the hardware or the documentation 
had been screwed up. The infant mortali- 
ty in the hardware combined with docu- 
mentation hassles have heavily under- 
scored the flaky sales support and the 
mediocrity of the operating system and 
language. Color Apple with a worm in it! 

By contrast, Digital Equipment Corpora- 
tion provides us with singularly outstand- 
ing support for our Rainbow. That system 
is supported by an excellent certification 



program for third-party software. If DEC 
says that a particular package such as 
CTOS or Lotus 1-2-3 will run on the Rain- 
bow, you can bet the company has tried 
it and within the range of their tests has 
found no implementation bugs. Our IBM 
Displaywriters use CP/M-86 and UCSD p- 
Systems that have outstanding support 
from D/R and Softtech as well as IBM. My 
TRS-80 came with a language reference 
manual and DOS manual as well as 
owners/operators manuals. The additional 
technical reference manuals were readily 
available from the dealer at nominal 
charges. Every Tandy manual was well 
written, pretty much stand-alone, and had 
a good reference appendix. The indexes 
and table of contents did not contain 
errors in page numbers. 

Just out of curiosity. I priced documen- 
tation at our local Commodore dealer and 
at a nearby Tandy Computer Center. Much 
of it is free with the system, and the prices 
on the remainder are moderate— what's 
more, it's readily available. 

Paul M. Hine 
San Diego, CA 



When a manufacturer sells a computer 
and withholds information on that com- 
puter, the computer's worth is in direct 
proportion to the amount of information 
one receives. No information means the 
computer is worthless, A computer is 
unique in this regard. If you buy a car, 
someone can always drive it or fix it 
without a shop manual. Try programming 
a computer to do something you want it 
to do without information on the I/O ports 
or the memory map. Try getting a com- 
puter fixed that no one has schematics for. 
Of course, somebody can always charge 
you three or four hundred dollars and 
replace the entire main circuit board when 
only a twenty-cent chip may be defective. 
You don't need a schematic to do that. 
After all, the manufacturer makes a lot of 
money selling you a new circuit board for 
$400 when you don't need one. 

I have an Apple He. I was originally in- 
terested in the compact Apple lie because 
of its built-in disk drive and its ability to 
be powered from a 12-volt car battery. 
Apple computer promised some day Real 

(continued) 



YEAR WARRANTY ON CARD AND DRIVE 



10 Mbyte 



SATISFACTION 
GUARANTEED 



Suggested retail price $1095 

SPECIAL 
SALE PRICE 



'945 



100% refundable within 30 days. 

For IBM PC* & compatibles. 2 
Years Warranty on disk drive and 
controller card. 

• Half-height drive with 
controller card 

• Low error rate 

• Low power 

• High performance and 

» reliability 
• Easy installation 

20 Mbyte for ' 1,495. 



TO ORDER SEND CHECK OR 
MONEY ORDER TO: 

Llnd e Technology, Inc. 

8820 S. Sepulveda Blvd., 

Suite 204 

Los Angeles, CA 90045 

OR CALL TOLL FREE: 

I (800) 227-2400 ext. 974 

in California call 

I (800) 772-2666 ext. 974 
Visa and MasterCard accepted. 

California residents add 6/2% sales tax. 



For dealer Inquiry and more 
Information call: {211} 215 94*4 

•IBM is a registered trademark of International 
Business Machines Corp. 



Yes, send me more 
information on: 

□ 10 Mbyte Disk Drive 

□ 20 Mbyte Disk Drive 

Linde Technology, Inc. 

8820 S. Sepufveda Blvd., Suite 204 
Los Angeles, CA 90045 





26 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 235 



A few smart reasons 
to buy our smart modem : 



Features 



Ven-Tel Hayes 

1200 PLUS 



1200 and 300 baud, auto-dial, auto-answer 

Compatible with "AT" command set 

Can be used with CROSSTALK-XVI or Smartcom II software 

Regulated DC power pack for cool, reliable operation 

Eight indicator lights to display modem status 

Speaker to monitor call progress 

Attractive, compact aluminum case 

Two built-in phone connectors 

Compatible with The Source and Dow Jones News Retrieval 

Unattended remote test capability 

Phone cable included 

Availability 

Price 



Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


No 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


No 


Yes 


Yes 


Yes 


No 


Yes 


Yes 


Now 




$499 


$6 



The Ven-Tel 1200 PLUS offers high speed, 
reliable telecommunications for your per- 
sonal computer or terminal. Whether you 
use information services or transfer data 
from computer to computer, the Ven-Tel 1200 
PLUS is the best product around. Available 
at leading computer dealers and distribu- 
tors nationwide. 

Also from Ven-Tel: internal modems for the 
IBM and HP-150 Personal Computers with 
all of the features of the 1200 PLUS. 

You choose. The Ven-Tel 1200 PLUS- 
the smartest choice in modems. 



^nofcnta"*^ 



Ven-Tel Inc. 

2342 Walsh Avenue 
Santa Clara, CA 95051 
(408) 727-5721 



'•***%? 



^Sfe* 1 



Crosstalk is a trademark of Microstuf: Hayes and Smartcom II are trademarks of Hayes Microcomputer Products. 
Inquiry 394 



APRIL 1985 ♦ BYTE 27 



E ■ .• '■'-'■- " I si : 



HP 






NOTE* 







xsm 




Borland's SideKick 
Software Product of theYear 



SideKick is InfoWorld Software Product of the Year. It won over 

Symphony. Over Framework. Over ALL the programs advertised in 

this magazine. Including, of course, all the "fly-by-night" SideKick 

imitations. SideKick .... Simply the best. 



fomestie Sales K&JL1 338. 

ntematioaal Sales SOT 55,88 i 

Iofai Sales 358,88 385.88 45 

C.O.G.S. 35.88 38.58 4 

Soplties 31.58 34.65 4 



Sonestic Salts 388.88 

Itttiutittal bits 58,88 

fetal Salts 358.88 

s \6.t. 35.88 

lties 31.58 

i Salts 283.58 



5?. 12 
J 266.25 382.63 345.16 395.13 
help jrprogya* key with iisplasei mate* *£+&* 




Here's SideKick running over Lotus 1-2-3. In the SideKick 
Notepad you'll notice data that's been imported directly from 
the Lotus screen. In the upper right you 
can see the SideKick Calculator. 



iBsssSS 



All the SideKick windows stacked up over Lotus 1-2-3. From 
bottom to top: SideKick's "Menu Window", ASCII table, 
Notepad, Calculator, Appointment Scheduler/Calendar, 
and Phone Dialer Whether you're running WordStar, Lotus, 
dBase, or any other program, SideKick puts all these desktop 
accessories instantly at your fingertips. 



Side 



kick 



looe 



lnfoW< (rid k' t port Card 1984 by Popular 
Computing. Inc.. a subsidiary o/CW 
Communications Inc. Reprinted from 
tafoWorid, 1060 Marsh Road. 
\h nic Park. CA 94025. 



Jerry Poumelle, BYTE: "If you use a 

PC, get SideKick. You'll soon become 
dependent on it." 

Garry Ray PC Week: "SideKick deserves 

a place in every PC" 

Charles Petzold, PC Magazine: "in a 

simple, beautiful implementation of Word- 
Star's block copy commands, SideKick 
can transport ail or any part of the display 
screen (even an area overlaid by the notepad 
display) to the notepad" 

Dan Robinson, InfoWorld: "SideKick is a 

time-saving, frustration-saving bargain . . 




t 



BORIPOD 



Softwares Newest Direction 

M \3 Scons VaueyDrve 



MTrmnATinmAi Scot!s Va,te y CaMoma 95066 

INTERNATIONAL telex 172373 



Symphony, Lotus & Lotus 1-2-3 are trademarks of Lotus Development Corp. dBase 
& Framework are trademarks of Asfrton-Tate. WordStar is a trademark of Micropro 
Internationa) Corp. SideKick is a trademark of Borland international. 




Inquiry 50 



APRIL 19S5 -BYTE 29 



Inquiry 404 



Planning to deduct your PC? 
The IRS just made it tougher. 

According to the Tax Reform Act of 1984, if you want 
to take a business deduction for your personal computer, you 
now must prove you use it more than half the time for 
business. And that proof must be in the form of a daily log. 

You can waste valuable time each day recording your 
use. Or you can use WorkLog to do the job in seconds. 

Considering how much your time is worth, isn't 
$59.95 a worthy investment? 

To order call (206) 526-0711. Or ask for our brochure 
that describes the power and elegance of this state-of-the-art 
software. WorkLog makes it easy. 

WorkLog 

The essential time-saver. "^ 



For IBM-PC \ -XT, -AT, and compatibles. Requires 128k and any version of PC -DOS. 
WyssWare/5207 Ravenna Ave. N.H. /Seattle. WA 98105 



1Q8S Best Western I 



The right place 
at the right price 




Make reservations at any Best Western. 
see your travel agent, or call 

1-800-528-1234. 

"World's largest chain of independently owned and 
operated hotels, motor inns, and resorts" 



LETTERS 



Soon Now to have a liquid-crystal display 
that would draw very little power and 
operate from a battery. 

The first snag I ran into was when 1 tried 
to find out from the Apple He manuals 
what the pin connections were for the 
nonstandard serial-port connector. No 
luck. Nowhere in the manuals that came 
with the computer could 1 find the con- 
nections for the serial interface. 

The next thing I did was call Apple long 
distance. I was put on hold for five minutes 
listening to some music. Needless to say 
it was not high-fidelity Finally, Patty came 
on the line and told me 1 had to call 
another long-distance number in another 
part of the country. Get this, I am in L.A. 
Well 1 called that number, and an answer- 
ing machine came on the line telling me 
to leave my name and phone number and 
my question and they would get back to 
me within 24 hours. Since 1 am in and out 
of the office all day and no one else at 
my office is knowledgeable enough to ask 
intelligent technical questions about 
RS-2 32C interfaces, that might be a prob- 
lem. If Apple personnel happened to call 
back while I was out of the office, at least 
another 24 hours would go by before 1 
could ask the first question. At this rate 
a year or more would go by before I could 
write this assembly-language program to 
talk to the Apple lie The answering 
machine also advised me to contact my 
nearest dealer. 

We have a lot of Apple dealers here in 
L.A. I contacted three of them. None of 
them knew anything more about it than 
I did. One advised me to go to all of the 
bookstores and get a book on the Apple 
lie. I did just that; in fact, 1 bought three 
books. So far, 1 have spent at least 40 
hours of my valuable time, $40 on books, 
and $50 on long-distance phone calls. I 
now know the pinouts on the connectors, 
but that is all the useful information those 
three books could tell me. Absolutely 
nothing else of any value. No memory 
locations for setting up the RS-232C inter- 
face chip or how to write code to send or 
receive data from the RS-232C interface 
in assembly language or BASIC. Nothing. 

Has Apple management grown so 
greedy that it doesn't want people to buy 
any device to hook up to an Apple lie 
unless they buy it from Apple? Does 
Apple want anyone to write and sell soft- 
ware other than Apple Computer? Is 
Apple management so paranoid that 
someone will copy the He that it is afraid 
to document the ROM? Why does Apple 
have an army of lawyers ready to sue 

(continued) 



30 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



NEW PRODUCT NEWS 
FROM TELETEK 



Systemaster II. Responding to 
market demand for speed and in- 
creased versatility, Teletek is proud 
to announce the availability of the 
next generation in 8-bit technology 
— the new Systemaster II! The 
Systemaster II will offer two CPU 
options, either a Z80B running 
at 6 MHz or a Z80H running at 
8 MHz, 128K of parity checked 
RAM, two RS232 serial ports with 
on-board drivers (no paddle 
boards required), two parallel 
ports, or optional SCSI or IEEE-488 
port. The WD floppy disk control- 
ler will simultaneously handle 
8" and 5W drives. A Zilog Z-80 
DMA controller will provide in- 
stant communications over the bus 
between master 
and slave. Add 
to the DMA 
capability a true 
dedicated inter- 
rupt controller 
for both on- 
board and 
bus functions, 
and the re- 
sult is un- 
precedented 
performance. 
Systemaster II will run under 
CP/M 3.0 or TurboDOS 1.3, and 
fully utilize the bank switching 
features of these operating systems. 



SBC 86/87. As the name indi- 
cates, Teletek's new 16-bit slave 
board has an Intel 8086 CPU with 
an 8087 math co-processor op- 
tion. This new board will provide 
either 1 28K or 51 2K of parity 
checked RAM. Two serial ports 
are provided with individually 
programmable baud rates. One 
Centronics-compatible parallel 
port is provided. When teamed up 
with Systemaster II under TurboDOS 
1.3, this 5MHz or 8MHz multi- 
user, multi-processing, combina- 
tion cannot be beat in speed or 
feature flexibility! 




NEW! SBC 86/87 
SYSTEMASTER tf 

AND Z-150 MB 



k 



TELETEK 



4600 Pell Drive 
Sacramento, CA 95838 
(916)920-4600 
Telex #4991834 
Answer back — Teletek 



nquiry 382 




W$BH;j 



m & 



IN BRAZIL: Danvic S.A 
R. Conselheiro Nebias, 1409 
01203 Sao Paulo, Brazil 
Tel: 221-6033 (P A B X) 
Telex: 1123888 CICP BR 






Teletek Z-150 MB. Teletek is 
the first to offer a RAM expansion 
board designed specifically for the 
Z-150/Z-160 from Zenith. The 
Teletek Z-150 MB is expandable 
from 64K to 384K. Bring your 
Z-150 up to its full potential by 
adding 320K of parity checked 
RAM (or your IBM PC, Columbia, 
Compaq, Corona, Eagle, or Seequa 
to their full potential). The Teletek 
Z-150 MB optionally provides 
a game port for use when your 
portable goes home or a clock/ 
calendar with battery backup! 

Evaluate the Systemaster II, SBC 
86/87 or Teletek Z-1 50 MB for 
30 days under Teletek's Eval- 
uation Program. A 

money-back guarantee 
is provided if not com- 
pletely satisfied! All 
Teletek products carry 
a 3-year warranty. 

(Specifications subject to 

change without 
notice.) 



$ mm 



"■• 



Yes, 'v 

I'm interested % 
in information ^ 

regarding: 
□ Systemaster II 
□ SBC 86/87 □ Z-150 MB 
□ Evaluation Program 
□ Teletek's S-100 Board Line 



Name_ 
Company. 
Address 



LETTERS 



anyone if the company even hints of 
manufacturing a machine that will run 
Apple software 9 Hasn't Appie manage- 
ment learned that the more information 
you supply in the box with the computer 
the less money it takes to support the 
product? Is the well-documented IBM PC 
outselling Apple everything 7 

One would think that Apple had learned 
its lesson with the Apple III. The Apple 



111 came with no real documentation as 
well. We all know what happened to the 
Apple III. From what 1 have seen of the 
Macintosh documentation, the Mac is in 
the same boat. 1 would not use a Mac if 
you gave me one. 

The next problem [ found was that the 
RS-232C data-transmission rate in the 
Apple lie was off frequency by just enough 
to prevent the RS232C from working prop- 



ssss 




Graphics Takes A 
Quantum Leap Forward! 




,i ;:.;;, ; I 






1 1 1 1 1 I I I I I ! 1 I I 



THE INOVION PERSONAL 
GRAPHICS SYSTEM FEATURES: 

• The most advanced color mapping 
capabilities available. 

• 250,000 simultaneously displayable 
colors. 

• A palette of 2.1 million colors. 

• Frame Grabber/ Digitizer to capture 
TV, VCR or Video Camera pictures. 

• Quality three-dimensional texture 
capabilities. 

• Built-in Icon/ Menu software. 

• Completely Mouse/Trackball driven. 
Fonts, Brushes, Microscope, Pat- 
terns, and Rotations. 



1 A complete stand alone system. 

1 A 19" enhanced color monitor. 

1 780K Graphics Memory. 

• 512 x 480 pixel display with 24 bits 
per pixel. 

1 RS232C port allows access to all 
system functions and memory. 

1 NTSC composite video and NTSC 
RGB signal. 

1-year warranty on graphics genera- 
tor and 90-day warranty on 
enhanced monitor. 

i Special introductory 30-day satis- 
faction guarantee. 

' Complete system for $4,495 



^t m 



-H-H-H-H-H-t- 



lki:-'..AfirB 



I LjytbnL Utah 84041 
(8k)1 546-|28fe0i 



l^li 



erly. Apparently Apple divided down the 
microprocessor clock crystal to save the $3 
cost of a data-transmission rate crystal. If 
the lie had a schematic in the owners 
manual, any competent computer techni- 
cian would know about the transmission- 
rate problem before purchasing the com- 
puter. I guess that is one of the reasons 
Apple did not put a schematic in the 
owners manual in the first place. The man 
on the Apple hotline told me to take the 
lie into any Apple computer dealer, who 
would fix it at no cost. None of the three 
dealers I contacted had heard of this repair 
program, nor would they do it at no cost. 

If you buy an Apple other than the lie, 
you need your head examined. 

A Commodore 64, although it costs 
much less than the Apple lie is worth at 
least 100 times as much because you can 
use it. You can get a vast quantity of pro- 
gramming and technical information on 
the Commodore 64 in great detail. Infor- 
mation that is necessary to program and 
interface all the things that people need 
a microcomputer for. 

I now own a $1200 paperweight. 

Paul Lamar 
Redondo Beach, CA 

Where Are Apples 
Manuals When You 
Need Them? 

Last night I tried to order an Apple lit 
Reference Manual at my local dealer. 1 was 
told that the manual costs $50, could be 
ordered only in boxes of five, and if 1 
would order five that they would be glad 
to handle my order. Of course I thought 
that 1 would go elsewhere. 

When I arrived home, some back issues 
of Apple Assembly Line had come in the mail. 
I discovered that Texas Apple dealers had 
the same policy and that it extended to 
ProDOS and He manuals as well. Eventual- 
ly I learned that these manuals could be 
ordered by mail from a dealer in New York 
(212-5I2-4IOO). 

Providing access to the fundamental 
hardware manuals for the machine is the 
most minima] level of dealer support 
possible. Perhaps K-Mart does not provide 
access to manuals for the computers it 
sells, but every self-respecting computer 
dealer must do this. 

The poor availability of these manuals 
must in part stem from the fact that they 
are seen as manuals only a hacker or pro- 
fessional software developer would want 
or need. Apparently Apple believes that 
its customers are not likely to grow in 
[continued on page 436) 



32 



B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 198 



FIXES AND UPDATES 



C Changes Quickly 



Our December 1984 article "C-Language 
Development Tools" by G. Michael Vose 
(page 119) brought several new C inter- 
preter vendors out of the woodwork. We 
also learned of a name change for one of 
the article's previewed products. 

The Safe C Compiler from Catalytix Cor- 
poration (55 Wheeler St.. Cambridge MA 
02138) is now called the Safe C Runtime 
Analyzer. The product's functions have not 
changed, only the name, to distinguish it 
from production compilers. 

Catalytix also announced the release of 
its Safe C Standalone Interpreter. The in- 
terpreter is a complete C implementation 
that allows the use of any text editor and 
source-code formatting or cross-referenc- 
ing utilities. Code interactively written and 
debugged within the interpreter can sub- 
sequently be complied into executable 
files, using any compiler that conforms to 
the Kernighan & Ritchie (K&R) C-language 
specification. Currently available for the 
IBM PC and other MS-DOS machines, the 
Safe C Standalone Interpreter sells for 



$400. A Macintosh version is under 
development. 

Age of Reason Company (318 East 6th 
St., New York, NY 10003) has announced 
the availability of RUN/C— a C interpreter 
for MS-DOS computers. Distributed by 
Lifeboat Associates (1651 Third Ave. New 
York. NY 10128). RUN/C costs $150. 

RUN/C features a built-in line editor 
similar to the Microsoft BASIC editor, plus 
the capability to use an outside editor. You 
can even compile your C programs from 
within the RUN/C interpreter. RUN/C fully 
implements the K&R specification for C 
but this interpreter has a limit of 2000-line 
programs. 

Gimpel Software (3207 Hogarth Lane, 
Collegeville. PA 19426) markets a C inter- 
preter called C-terp. also for the IBM PC 
and work-alikes using MS-DOS 2.x. C-terp 
costs $300; a demonstration disk is avail- 
able for $45. C-terp also fully implements 
the Kernighan & Ritchie C-language 
specification, includes an editor, and of- 
fers batch-mode operation. C-terp sup- 



ports small or large memory models. 

Lastly, Computer Innovations (980 
Shrewsbury Ave.. Tinton Falls, NJ 07724), 
purveyors of the C86 C Compiler, offers 
Introducing-C a C interpreter designed to 
help the programming novice learn C as 
her/his first language. 

Introducing-C does not fully implement 
the K&R C specification, but it documents 
the differences in a 10-page appendix. For 
example. Introducing-C does not support 
multidimensional arrays, #defines, struct 
and union data structures, the typedef 
declaration, and several other com- 
ponents of C Future revisions to the in- 
terpreter will provide many of the features 
currently missing. Introducing-C's inter- 
preter is upward-compatible with the C86 
compiler. 

Computer Innovations claims that Intro- 
ducing^ is suitable for learning structured 
programming and most of C and for de- 
veloping "medium-sized, non-scientific 
programs." Available for the IBM PC Intro- 
ducing-C costs $95. 



Printer Buffer Messaged 



In the lune 1984 BYTE there were several 
errors in the article "Build a Printer Buf- 
fer" by |ohn Bono (page 142). Richard 
Carl sen from Upton, New York, built the 
printer buffer, encountered and overcame 
some difficulties, and wrote us about his 
travails. Here are some excerpts from his 
letter: 

1 noticed corrections in the November 
1984 BYTE on the ROM listings (page 34). 
but I haven't seen any hardware updates, 
so here are some suggestions for improv- 
ing John Bono's project. 

In listing 1 on page 453 (June BYTE), line 
13 should show EQU 0FFFFH (zero, not 
"oh") and line 17 should be A. 0FFH. 

In the schematic on page 4 50. IC 14 is 
incorrectly labeled 74LSO0 at the top of 
the page IC 14 is a 74LS367A. (I should 
also note that I tried both the 74LS367s 
and 74LS367AS, and they both work fine.) 



Input pins 4 and 10 of IC 14 should be tied 
high or at least not left floating as those 
sections are unused. Floating leads are not 
good practice and could cause some oc- 
casional errors. 

On the middle left on page 450 the data 
lines are in inverse order. DO should be 
D7, D6 should be Dl, and so on until D7 
is DO. They are labeled correctly at the 
Z80 and 2716. 

A useful item to add is a reset switch 
across the 68-/xF (microfarad) cap on pin 
26 of the Z80. I added a 47-ohm resistor 
in series with the switch so discharge of 
the 68-/xF cap is a little more gentle. 

At the lower right on page 452 you'll 
find IC 13 and IC 24 (printer acknowledge 
FF). A signal is missing (G6) at IC 13, pin 
9. Remove pin 4 of IC 24 from + 5 V. Leave 
IC 24. pin 2 connected to + 5 V. Now con- 
nect pin 4 of IC 24 to pin 9 of IC 13. This 



will allow D306 at line 26 on page 4i>3 to 
reset the printer's acknowledge flip-flop. 

On page 452. data lines, strobe, busy, 
and acknowledge to the left of IC 9 should 
be labeled "TO COMPUTER." At the right 
of IC 15 they should be labeled "TO 
PRINTER." 

Be aware that all 4164 RAM chips are 
not created equal. They come in different 
speeds usually designated by a -2 or -3 
suffix. ! have had no trouble with either. 
However, some companies require 128 
refresh cycles over a 2 -microsecond 
period. Others may require 2 56 refresh 
cycles over a 4-microsecond peri< 1. 1 used 
NEC 4164-2 chips and Moste. 4564-2 
chips successfully, both of which require 
128 cycles. Others requiring 2 56 refresh 
cycles gave me occasional errors. 

Another pointer: Watch the power wir- 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 33 



Inquiry 2 70 



MidWcst 
Micro-Peripherals 



Save with 






Let us earn your trust as we 

have that of others, such as: 

Goodyear • General Motors • US Navy • etc 
Ask for: Sue. Marianne. Kathy, Tim, Rick or Roger 



List Our Price 

PRINTERS 

Star Gemini 1 0X (120 CPS) $399 $219 

Star Gemini SG-10 (NEW!) 299 229 

Star Gemini 15X 549 349 

Star Gemini SG-15 (NEW!) 499 379 

Star Delta 10 f Delta 15 (160 CPS) $CALL$ 

Star Radix 10 / Radix 15 (200 CPS) $CALL$ 

Epson RX 80 (100 CPS) 399 229 

Epson RX-80 F/T + Series (NEW!) 499 289 

Epson FX-&0 + Series (NEW 1 ) 689 389 

Epson FX-100 + Seres (NEW!) 995 599 

Epson JX 80 Color 799 SCALLS 

Epson LQ 1500 (200 CPS) 1495 $CALL$ 

Okidata 92 P (80 Col... 160 CPS) 599 379 

Okidata Apple imagewnter Compatible 699 449 

Okidata 93P (136 Col.. 160 CPS) 999 599 

Okidata Pacemark 24 1 0P (1 50 CPS) 2495 SCALLS 

Panasonic 1091 (120 CPS) 499 299 

Panasonic 1 090, 1 092, 1 093 $CALL$ 

Toshiba 1340P (54 CPS) 985 769 

Toshiba 1351 P (100 CPS) 1855 1299 

DAISYWHEEL PRINTERS 

Brother HR-15XL (17 CPS) 599 359 

Brother HR-25 (23 CPS) 895 619 

Brother HR-35 (32 CPS) 1245 839 

Silver Reed EXP 400 399 279 

Stiver Reed EXP 500 (16 CPS) 599 359 

Silver Reed EXP 550 (19 CPS) 699 439 

Silver Reed EXP 770 (36 CPS) 1295 829 

Star PowerType (18 CPS, Bi-Dir) 499 328 

Juki 6100 (18 CPS, Bi-Dir) 599 399 

Juki 6300 999 749 

Daisywriter 2000 (40 CPS) 1495 899 

IBM PC SYSTEMS 

PC's and PCXT's 

Complete Systems 
Call and Save! 

EXPANSION CARDS 

AST Six Pac Plus 64K, S/P/C+S/W 
QUA DRAM Complete Line 
MEMORY CHIP kit-64K 150ns-9 chips 




269 

$CALL$ 
49 



149 
299 

159 

1395 SCALLS 
1895 SCALLS 
SCALLS 

SCALLS 



289 219 

399 269 

399 239 

699 469 

599 399 



DISK DRIVES 

Teac Half Heights 299 

Teac 2 Drive Kit - Complete 499 

Tandon 100-2 (IBM Standard) 399 

Maynard - 10 Meg. Internal Drive 
Maynard 20MB Tape Backup 
Tali grass Drives w/Tape Backup 
Turbo 10 10 MB Internal Hard Drive 

MODEMS 
Hayes Smartmodem 300 
Hayes Apple 2c Modem Pkg w/Software 
Hayes Apple 2E Modem Pkg w/Software 
Hayes Smartmodem 1200 
Hayes Smartmodem 1 200B w/IBM Software 

MONITORS 

Amdek 300, 310; Color 500, 600, 700 SCALLS 

Princeton Graphics 4x12 Maxi 2 SCALLS 

SOFTWARE 

Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony & Hundreds More SCALLS 

SANYO SYSTEMS 
Complete Sanyo i«i ■ nu/ 
Systems MM L jjg 

Lots of — $899 

Free Software 






OUR PRICE COMMITMENT 

MidWest will try in good faith to beat 
any nationally advertised price. 



Prices subject to change and type errors 



FREE CAROUSE 



Call Today! 

Information - Ordering 

1-f 00-423-82 15 

In C-iio 1-800-321-7731 

C USTOMER SERVICE (513) 663-499 2 

CASH PRICES: Cert, Check, Money Orders, VISA or MC 
C00S {Add $5) AMEX (Add 4%) P.O.s (Add 5%) 

MidW«(t Micro Peripheral! 

(Division of Infotel Jnc j 

135 South Sprtngfteld St 

St Pans. Ohio 43072 



FIXES & UPDATES 



ing to these RAM chips. Pin 16 is ground 
and pin 8 is + 5 V. This is not as you would 
usually expect with 16-pin chips, and I sure 
got caught wiring these wrong. 

On my unit I used a crystal oscillator at 
1 MHz hooked to pin 6 of the Z80. If you 
do this, a IK pull-up resistor or so at pin 
6 will ensure that the "1" levels are 4,0 to 
4.5 V as the Z80 requires there. 

Not all printers and computers handle 
Centronics interfacing in the same man- 
ner. My Kaypro 2, for example, does not 
use the ACK signal. The buffer works fine 
with my Okidata 92 with the Kaypro using 
just the busy signal. Your computer may 
also use other signals such as the "Paper 
Out" line, Consult your printer and com- 
puter manuals or dealer about your 
printer and computer parallel ports before 
starting this project. In most cases you 
should be able to work things out with the 
available signals supplied by the buffer. 

Some new ideas have been suggested 
by other readers of this article for improv- 
ing the project and I'll pass them on. 

1. Multiple dumps by the use of a repeat 

printout switch would be useful. This 



would allow extra copies of a document 
to be printed from the buffer's memory 
without disturbing the computer. 
Recoding of the RAM and some minor 
hardware additions would be necessary, 

2. Self-check of memory. This would also 
require some additional ROM coding. 

3, A printer code preloader, which would 
let you change printer functions (such as 
compressed print mode, character pitch, 
or near letter quality) by sending the 
printer prewritten codes stored in the 
printer-buffer ROM. These could be 
selected by thumb-wheel switch and 
entered to the printer by a push-button 
switch using the remaining port 7 select 
at G7 pin 7 of IC 1 3 as a means of address- 
ing this feature. 

If anybody has completed these or other 
features, please write in to BYTE and let 
the rest of us in on it. This is a great proj- 
ect when it's working. 1 would like to thank 
John Bono for writing this article and for 
his patience with my questions. I wish also 
to thank other readers for their time on 
the phone and exchange of ideas, and 
BYTE for acting as the intermediary. 



Communication on Modem Gets Garbled 



In the What's New section of the Guide to 
the Apple Personal Computers, a special sup- 
plement to the December 1984 BYTE, we 
inadvertently published the wrong picture 
and supplied some incorrect information. 

The picture on page A 136 does not 
depict Multi-Tech Systems' internal modem 
card for the Apple II, but rather it shows 
Multi-Tech Systems' MultiModem 1200/ 
300-bps external modem. 

The single-board MultiModem Me, 
shown here, fits entirely inside Apple II 
series computers and does not require a 
serial card. It operates at 110/300 bps, 
features auto-answer and auto-dial, and 
comes with communications software. The 
list price is $229, which includes free-time 
and subscription discounts to a number 
of database networks, such as Dow Jones 
News/Retrieval Service and the Instant 

Corrections from Commodore 




Yellow Page Service. 

The MultiModem 1200/300 stores up to 
six 31 -digit telephone numbers, detects 
dial and busy tones, and can continuous- 
ly redial busy numbers. It lists for $549. 

Both modems come with two-year war- 
ranties. Multi-Tech Systems Inc. is head- 
quartered at 82 Second Ave. SE, New 
Brighton, MN 55112, (612) 631-3550. 



The model number of Commodore's new 
1 28K-byte computer was incorrectly stated 
in the February What's New section (page 
40). 

The computer is known as the Commo- 
dore CI28 Also, it uses the 8502 micro- 
processor to run Commodore software 



and its Z80 coprocessor runs at 4 MHz. 
The article also described a new high- 
speed disk drive that works with both the 
CI 28 and the C64. In its C64 mode, the 
drive transfers data at 300 cps. While in 
its C128 or CP/M modes, the data rate is 
5200 cps. ■ 



34 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



by ^FTEK 



THE HIGH PERFORMANCE 
NDOM ACCESS TAPE RACK-UP ! 

THE NEXT GENERATION OF TAPE DRIVES. 



DATASAFE STAND ALONE UNIT 

C/W cable (chains off DB-37 connector on rear of computer) 
Has its own booster power supply 
Is easy to install 



DATASAFE INTERNALLY MOUNTED UNIT 

■ Is daisy chained off the existing floppy controller 

■ Requires IBM plug compatible bus and internally selected 
4 channel select floppy disk controller 

■ No additional slots needed 





For IBM XT's and compatibles ■ Incorporates main frame micro reel technology 
I Random access ■ Use of PC DOS and MS DOS commands (tree, path, etc.) ■ MTBF - 20,000 hrs. 

■ Reliable (150,000 load and unload failsafe tested by an independent laboratory) 
C/W software device drivers ■ C/W cable ■ Extremely fast back-ups ■ 10 meg available only 
"1 Priced less than 50% less than the nearest rival ■ ONE YEAR WARRANTY 



The DATASAFE uses industry 
standard V/' tape on a self threading 
2.2 "spool 




1050 Clinton St. 

Buffalo, New York 

14206 

Tel.; (716) 694-5366 Telex: 916428 



<&FTEK 



762 Gordon Baker Rd. 

Willowdale, Ontario 

Canada M2H3B4 

Tel.: (416) 497-0531 or toll free 

1-800-268-5412 Telex: 06-986133 



Business Machines Inc. 

PRIME DEALER DISTRIBUTOR TERRITORIES AVAILABLE. OEM CALLS INVITED. 



You have wanted to do something, 
but the door has been closed . . . 



6 File Edit Icons Uttphuj Search f <mi S1 tji 
HEPUH1 



[wT] 

[wT| 

j gEI 



$12,779.22 

$10,253 89 

$20,145.50 

$6,778.05 



$15,175 90 
$13,020.19 
$22,998.00 
$43,332.00 



$9,765 88 
$13,786.33 
$14,995.43 
$25,790.00 




amount |date ]accl. |neuj 

$6,554 10/28/ 432 Yes 

$233 00 10/28/ 879 Yes 

($9 00) 10/25/ 456 Y*s 

$7,654 3 10/23/ 543 No 

$6.7780 10/19/ 66 No 

C$43 33) 10/19/ 983 No 

$5,656 5 10/17/ 543 No 

$10000 10/17/ 666 Vm 

$1,987 10/12/ 110 No 

$8,887 9 10/10/ 65 Yes 

*7ft <»n in/in/ 777 m» 



Helix is a data-based system, so that once you enter information 
you can use it for anything - reports, lists, analyses, mail merge 
printouts, or even relational look-ups to other data-bases within 
Helix. 



Requires an external drive or hard disk 

512K Macintosh Lisa with MacWorks 
■Supports Hard disks Keypad 15" Imagewriter 

rulud' Helix Program disk Helix Guided Tour disk Helix 
Resource/Work disk User Manual 18-ring project binder 

Reference pad for custom documentation Registration card 
for support & updates 

( Offers Modeless input, interactive query, editing, & report gen- 
eration Text-formatting Calculations between fields & across 
records Object-oriented, icon-based design Relational Look- 
ups List management Mail merge Clipboard & ASCII file 
transfer Special Template tools for form design User defined, 
automatically updated Indexes Unrestricted length & number 
of fields Complete printing options Vertical and horizontal 
autoscroll Visual building blocks for arithmetic, date, text & 
Boolean operators, functions, & values. 




The full functionality of Helix lies within its six 
basic icons. You can "learn by doing" with Helix, 
since it does not get in your way with imposed 
structure or restrictions. You don't have to 
worry about parameters, command codes, or 
"modes". 



turd worW Our mat 

thti ptri«Kl joVitton* 

e*pit*l eommttmwHi 
*nd offw d*v»topwig 
*r»« (<)*o<)r»ph>nc 




All open windows are updated automatically. 
Used here to simultaneously enter project 
notes, see synopses, get phone numbers, and 
display important "global" statistics. 



SOFTCON 

Georgia World Congress Center 

Atlanta, Georgia 

Sunday-Wednesday 

March 31 to April 3. 1985 

10 am to 5 pm daily 

Booth I427 



© 1985 Odesta Corp. 

Odesta Helix is a trademark of Odesta Corporat iun 
Apple, Lisa, and Macintosh are trademarks of 
Apple Computer, Inc. 



Odesta Helix opens the door. 



6 File Edit Ico ns BKgjatj Vp»rt:rt I art! SUflc 
shipping 



* FiIp Edit Icons tli»i>mij Search i mil si^ie 




Format I Vf/! ( r^ "l r- n r~ n t ? — 1^) 

TZT^^fe |To^ip] | pa [Ho?l| CB [S] PS |[[nj|^[ J 



price item ■ item ■ invento 



Now, you don't have to learn a programming language or worry 
ahout "relational algebra". Except for the three numbers you 
see, no typing was used to create these calculations: "If invoice 
amount is equal to or greater than $2500, then don't charge for 
shipping, otherwise charge 2.5$ of the invoice amount" . . . 
"Look up the price for the item in the inventory data-base" . . . 
"Multiply the items price by how many were shipped" . . . 



* File Edit Icons msphsij Search Font style 
Relation 




Helix combines powerful functions with a design that gives you 
direct control. 



Y.i1«.rdg*i SMI Sph*r», Ink 
1225 Narttwjft Pl*cr 
Suit* 33 
Hobok.n N*v J*rs*9 02334 



Thank you (or responding to our questionnaire. 

Hs a fiber-dye specialist working with natural color techniques, 

your peripectiue on the needs and Interests of the members of 

BeMused is particularly welcome. 

The results of our suruey are uery Interesting. 

55% of current members ttaue never attended a regional workshoi 

or seminar. 

39% said that they would be interested in a co-op buying seruice 

pay as much as 530/year to help defray administrative enpenses. 

There were 9 graves ef at least IS people laterested la 

participating ia lae newly proposed special interest clat 

ll>« «■«•■• fittmr-rrmtt nmmmrmtmii l«raa* nt tKa«» Mi* 



Built-in text formatting lets you combine infor- 
mation in a new way for mail merge letters, 
memo's, reports or free-form comments. 



Helix provides a unique place to work because 
it takes a different approach. 

It is based on the idea that we discover 
the important questions, relationships, and 
connections between things by working with 



(So we need to be able to work with words and 
numbers in many different forms). 

That our own experience, perception, and 
understanding are the basis of true "knowledge 
work". 

And that this process can be both productive 
and playful, intently serious and intensely 
enjoyable. 

(So we need a technology that is flexible, 
accommodating, and directly responsive to our 
actions and style of dialogue). 



Gocs/a X. 


H= 


L 


► 


w 






Kmm 



Odesta, MHO On 
(800) 323-5423 



Drive. Northbrook, II 60062 ( ISA ) 
ioiy « 312} i98 5615 



A Data-Based Information Management & 
Decision Support System 



ANOTHER KlN6-6tZB 
ACVANTA&E ClToH 
HAS OVER OTHER 
PRINTERS/ 

The biggest name in printers might be a 
name you don't even know. C. Itoh. 

But people who do know C. Itoh printers 
know that they've always had a big edge in 
speed. And an edge in reliability. 

And an edge in support, with service centers 
nationwide and the backing of a worldwide 
$60 billion parent company. 

And now, C. Itoh ProWriter™ dot matrix and 
StarWriter™ daisy wheel printers have a big 
edge in price, too. 

We've been able to reduce our retail prices 
an average of 30%, because we've reduced 
our distribution costs by selling directly to our 
dealers. 

It's given us a price advantage of $80 to 
$1,000 over what the competition has to offer. 

Take a look. 




DOT 
MATRIX 


BRAND MODEL NO. 


SPEED 

LINES PER 
MINUTE 


PRICE 

MFG SUGG 
RETAIL 


C. ITOH 


7500 


54 


$ 289 




EPSON 


RX-80FT 


44 


269 


STAR 


GEMINI 10X 


48 


399 


IBM 


5152 


36 


494 










DAISY 
WHEEL 




CHARACTERS 
PER SECOND 




C ITOH 


A10-20S 


29 


$ 669 


QUME 


LP20 


20 


799 


NEC 


2010 


20 


950 


DIABLO 


620 


20 


995 










C. ITOH 


F10-55 


58 


1,449 


DATA 
PRODUCTS 


DP55 


55 


1,895 


QUME 


1155 


55 


1.995 


NEC 


7700 


55 


2,495 



C. Itoh. The best selling printers in the world, 
with 1.7 million printers sold in 1984 alone, now 
have the best prices, too. 

For more information call toll-free 
1-800-423-0300. Or write C. Itoh Digital 
Products, Inc. 19750 South Vermont Avenue, 
Suite 220, Torrance, CA 90502. 



CoLTLffiLrO 



1984 News Group Chicago. Inc. 



twees 



OUR 
PftCBS 




38 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



'" ProWriter & StarWriter are Trademarks of C. Itoh Digital Products, Inc 
€ 1985 C Itoh Digital Products, Inc. 

Inquiry 5 5 for Dealers. Inquiry 56 for End Users. 



WHAT'S NEW 



Thermal Printer Has Full Graphics Ability 



General Electric recently 
announced the Model 
3-8100, a $300 thermal- 
transfer letter-quality printer 
with full graphics capability. 
Although the printer comes 
standard with a Centronics- 
type parallel connector, GE 
will also sell two compatibili- 
ty modules for $89.95. One 
allows direct connection to 
the Atari 400/800 com- 
puters and Commodore's 64 
and V1C-20; the other 
module permits direct con- 
nection to the IBM PCjr. 

The Mode! 3-8100 prints 
at two speeds: 50 cps in 
draft mode and 2 5 cps in 
letter-quality mode. At both 
speeds, the printer is quiet. 
A 16-dot print head pro- 
vides high-resolution dot- 
matrix output. 

The Model 3-8100 can use 
single-sheet, roll, or 9!^-inch- 
wide fanfold paper. It prints 




The General Electric 3-8100 dot-matrix printer, 



on thermal paper if you 
remove the cartridge. Each 
ribbon cartridge costs about 
$6 and provides about 
100.000 characters. 

The manufacturers sug- 
gested retail price for the 



Model 3-8100 is $299.95. 
Contact General Electric Co.. 
Consumer Electronics Busi- 
ness Operation, POB 4840. 
Electronics Park, Syracuse, 
NY 13221, (315) 456-3304. 
Inquiry 600. 



Keyboard Enhancement Has Macros, Data Encryption 



Borland International's 
SuperKey is a RAM- 
resident keyboard-enhance- 
ment program featuring 
macros and automatic data 
encryption. This program 
lets you define, edit, save, 
load, and recall macros on 
your IBM PC in real time. 

SuperKey has a memory- 
resident full-screen macro 
editor that can be pulled 
down on top of a currently 
running program. The pro- 
gram supports single-key 
macros, user-definable 
macro titles, help menus, 
date/time information, alter- 
nate arrow-key definition, 
key-click switching, keyboard 
lock/unlock, sound effects, 
and color control. 



With SuperKey, you can 
recall from a command 
stack the last 20 commands 
entered. These are displayed 
in a menu window that lets 
you select, edit, and reuse 
the commands at the DOS 
command level or in a pro- 
gram. SuperKey has a cut- 
and-paste capability that 
permits any data to be 
copied from the screen, 
stored within SuperKey 
under any key, and then 
moved into another 
application. 

The SuperKey data- 
encryption function lets you 
encode files in two modes. 
In the first mode, no second 
file is created, thus saving 
disk space. In the second 



mode, you can encrypt 
binary files by transforming 
them into ASCII. This lets 
you transmit these files over 
telephone lines. The recip- 
ient of the files decrypts 
them using a special "key." 
Also featured is a display 
burn-in protection capability 
that automatically switches 
off a monitor's video signal 
when no activity is detected 
for a reasonable length of 
time. The display is automat- 
ically reactivated when any 
key is pressed. The program 
is priced at $69.95. Contact 
Borland International, 4113 
Scotts Valley Dr., Scotts 
Valley, CA 95066. (408) 
438-8400. 
Inquiry 601. 



GE TVs Also 
Serve As Monitors; 
Modem Unveiled 

Two new television sets 
from General Electric 
can also serve as your com- 
puter monitor. The Model 
13BC5509 is a 13-inch color 
monitor, and the Model 
12XR5204 is a 12-inch 
black-and-white monitor. 

Both units handle 80-char- 
acter-per-line displays and 
feature a display width- 
reduction capability that 
prevents character loss at 
the screen's edge. They ac- 
cept composite-video input 
as well as standard antenna 
connectors and are compati- 
ble with most home com- 
puters from Apple, Atari. 
Commodore, IBM, and other 
manufacturers. 

Suggested retail price is 
$489.95 for the color moni- 
tor and $129.95 for the 
black-and-white unit. 

In a concurrent announce- 
ment, GE introduced the 
Model 3-8200 direct/acoustic 
modem. This 300-bps mo- 
dem has a standard 
RS-232C cable, and optional 
cables are available for 
direct connection to Atari or 
Commodore computers. 

The 3-8200 has automati- 
cally switchable answer/ 
originate modes and once 
tied into a database, it auto- 
matically adjusts for full- and 
half-duplex operation. 

The Model 3-8200 modem 
has a suggested retail price 
of $119.95. Contact General 
Electric Co., Consumer Elec- 
tronics Business Operation, 
POB 4840, Electronics Park. 
Syracuse. NY 13221, (315) 
456-3304. 
Inquiry 602. 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 39 



WHAT'S NEW 



Kaypros 286i Is an IBM PC AT Compatible 



Kaypro's 286i, scheduled 
for formal introduction 
last month, is compatible 
with IBM's Personal Com- 
puter AT. It features a 
6-MHz 80286 processor, two 
parallel ports, one serial 
port, and two l.2-megabyte 
5!4-inch floppy-disk drives. 
The system's main board 
comes with 5 1 2 K bytes of 



RAM, expandable to 640K 
bytes; expansion cards can 
supply an additional 15 
megabytes of RAM to the 
system. 

Three of the system's eight 
IBM-compatible expansion 
slots are occupied, leaving 
five for additional peripher- 
als or memory. The 286i's 
84 -key keyboard is also 



functionally compatible with 
the PC AT's. 

Standard with the system 
are color graphics (RGB and 
composite, both of which 
are compatible with the IBM 
graphics-display card) and a 
clock/calendar with battery 
backup. Software bundled 
with the system includes 
Micropro's WordStar, Mail- 



Merge, InfoStar, CalcStar, 
tutorials, and Microsoft's 
GW-BASIC interpreter. 

The Kaypro 286i has a 
suggested list price of 
$4 5 50. For more informa- 
tion, contact Kaypro Corp., 
533 Stevens Ave., Solano 
Beach, CA 92075. (619) 
481-4300. 
Inquiry 603. 



130-cps Printer Is Compatible with Epson RX-80 



The Aero from Alphacom 
is a 130-cps dot-matrix 
printer that's compatible 
with existing software and 
graphics supporting Epson's 
RX-80 series printing pro- 
tocols. Alphacom has op- 
timized the Aero's print 
speed with the inclusion of 
path-seeking logic and a 2K- 



byte buffer. 

Aero produces the stan- 
dard 96-member ASCII 
character set, and it lets you 
define up to 96 characters 
for custom applications. It 
forms 6- by 8-dot characters 
with true descenders in a 6- 
by 9-dot matrix grid using a 
9-wire print head. The print 




Alphacom s Aero is compatible with Epson's RX-80. 



ALL Card Allows 4 Megabytes RAM in IBM PC 



head outputs either 480 or 
960 dots per line in either 
alphanumeric or bit-image 
modes. 

Manuscripts printed out 
on the Aero can display any 
mixture of superscripts, 
subscripts, double-strike, 
enlarged and emphasized 
type, underlining, text, and 
graphics on the same line. 
Aero will print out an 
original and three copies 
using perforated or regular- 
bond paper. 

Indicators for power-on, 
on-line, paper-out, and ready 
are located on the top right 
side of the Aero along with 
its operator controls. Aero 
comes with a self-test fea- 
ture, and it uses standard 
Epson ink cartridges. 

RS-232C and Centronics- 
type parallel versions of 
Aero are available. The sug- 
gested retail is $249.95. 
Contact Alphacom Inc., 2323 
South Bascom Ave, Camp- 
bell. CA 95008, (408) 
559-8000. 
Inquiry 604. 



ALL Computers' ALL 
Card ATI features a 
custom CMOS memory- 
management unit (MMU) 
processor, in addition to 
other memory and interface 
enhancements, on a single 
IBM PC expansion card. The 
ATI comes with a clock/ 



calendar, a serial port, the 
MMU, and room for 1 
megabyte of on-board 
memory using 2 56K-byte 
chips. You can add up to a 
total of 4 megabytes to the 
system. 

With 2 56K bytes of 
memory, the ATI ALL Card 



is $1295. Without the MMU. 
it's $795. A version with 
neither memory nor the 
MMU is $395. Contact ALL 
Computers Inc., Suite 501, 
110 Bloor St. W. Toronto, 
Ontario M5S 2W7, Canada. 
(416) 960-0111. 
Inquiry 605. 



Internal Hard Disk 
for PC AT 

Control Data Corporation 
is now shipping a 30- 
megabyte hard-disk drive 
that fits inside IBM's PC AT 
Called the StorageMaster 
630, this drive has a typical 
access time of 30 milli- 
seconds, which is reported 
to be approximately 2 5 per- 
cent faster than the native 
IBM drive. 

The StorageMaster 630 
uses the PC AT's resident 
disk controller and is ship- 
ped with adaptive software 
that lets you tweak it for 
operation with PC-DOS 3.0. 
The software gives you the 
ability to logically partition 
and format the disk, and in- 
cludes diagnostic routines. 

A pair of StorageMaster 
630s can be tucked side-by- 
side within the PC AT's 
cabinet. Installing the 
StorageMaster 630 into the 
PC AT housing is said to re- 
quire less than one hour. 

Disk image or selected 
file-backup capabilities for 
the StorageMaster 630 are 
available through use of 
Control Data's 45-megabyte 
StorageMaster 74 5 !4-inch 
cartridge streaming-tape 
backup system. 

The suggested list price 
for the StorageMaster 630 is 
$2145. Contact Control Data 
Corp., 8100 34th Ave. S, 
POB 0, Minneapolis, MN 
5 5440, (800) 328-3390. 
Inquiry 613. 

[continued] 



40 B YTE ■ APRIL 1985 




They said it couldn't be 
Borland Did It.Turbo Pascal 3j0 



The industry standard 

With more than 250,000 users worldwide Turbo 
Pascal is the industry's de facto standard. Turbo 
Pascal is praised by more engineers, hobbyists, 
students and. professional programmers than any 
other development environment in the history of 
microcomputing. And yet, Turbo Pascal is 
simple and fun to use! 



TURBO TURBO MS 
3.0 2.0 PASCAL 



COMPILATION SPEED 



EXECUTION SPEED 



CODE SIZE 



BUILT-IN INTERACTIVE EDITOR 



ONE STEP COMPILE 

(NO LINKING NECESSARY) 



COMPILER SIZE 



TURTLE GRAPHICS 



BCD OPTION 



PRICE 




Portability 

Turbo Pascal is available today for most computers 
running PC DOS, MS DOS, CP/M 80 or CP/M 86. A 
XENIX version of Turbo Pascal will soon be announced, 
and before the end of the year, Turbo Pascal will be 
running on most 68000 based microcomputers. 

An Offer You Can't Refuse 

Until June 1st, 1985, you can get Turbo Pascal 3.0 for 
only $69.95. Turbo Pascal 3.0, equipped with either the 
BCD or 8087 options is available for an additional 
$39.95 or Turbo Pascal 3.0 with both options for only 
$124.95, As a matter of fact, if you own a 16 Bit 
computer and are serious about programming, you 
might as well get both options right away and save 
almost $25. 

Update policy 

As always, our first commitment is to our customers. 
You built Borland and we will always honor your 
support. 

So, to make your upgrade to the exciting new version of 
Turbo Pascal 3.0 easy, we will accept your original Turbo 
Pascal disk (in a bend-proof container) for a trade-in 
credit of $39.95 and your Turbo87 original disk for 
$59.95. This trade-in credit may oniy be applied toward 
the purchase of Turbo Pascal 3.0 and its additional BCD 
and 8087 options (trade-in offer is only valid directly 
through Borland and until June 1st, 1985). 



O Benchmark run on an IBM PC using MS Pascal version 3.2 and 
the DOS linker version 2.6. The 179 line program used is the "Gauss 
Seidel" program out of Alan R. Miller's book: Pascal programs for 
scientists and engineers (Sybex, page 128) with a 3 dimensional 
non-singular matrix and a relaxation coefficient of 1.0. 



The best just got better: 
Introducing Turbo Pascal 10 

We just added a whole range of exciting new 
features to Turbo Pascal: 

• First, the world's fastest Pascal compiler just got 
faster. Turbo Pascal 3.0 compiles twice as fast as 
Turbo Pascal 2.0! No kidding. 

• Then, we totally rewrote the file I/O system, and 
we also now support I/O redirection. 

• For the IBM PC versions, we've even added 
"turtle graphics" and full tree directory support. 

• For all 16 Bit versions, we now offer two addi- 
tional options: 8087 math coprocessor support 
for intensive calculations and Binary Coded 
Decimals (BCD) for business applications. 

• And much much more. 

The Critics' Choice. 

Jeff Duntemann, PC Magazine: "Language 
deal of the century . . . Turbo Pascal: ft 
introduces a new programming environment and 
runs like magic" 

Dave Garland, Popular Computing: "Most 
Pascal compilers barely fit on a disk, but Turbo 
Pascal packs an editor, compiler, linker, and run- 
time library into just 29K bytes of random- 
access memory." 

Jerry Poumelle, BYTE: "What I think the 
computer industry is headed for: well 
documented, standard, plenty of good features, 
and a reasonable price," 




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Software's Newest Direction 

4113 Scotts Valley Drive 
ikiTrnkiATinMAi $ cotts Valle ¥ California 95066 

INTERNATIONAL telex. 172373 

Inquiry 47 
Turbo Pascal is a registered trademark of Borland International, inc. 




WHAT'S NEW 



S-100 Graphics Cards Produce TV-Quality Images 



T he S-Series of color- 
graphics products lets 
you produce images to the 
maximum resolution of 
NTSC and PAL television 
standards on Cromemco's 
68000- based S-100 com- 
puter systems. The S-Series 
comprises the previously an- 
nounced SDD Color Digitizer 
Interface, plus four new 
S-100 (IEEE-696 standard) 
bus cards. 

The SVID Color Video 
Generator Board works with 
the SDMA Video Memory 
Controller card to generate 
color images by panning 
over a virtual 1024- by 
1024-pixel image The NTSC 
version displays 756 by 484 
pixels, while the PAL card 
set generates a 756- by 
577-pixel image. Depending 
on graphics memory, up to 
8 bits of data can be allo- 
cated per pixel to select up 
to 2 56 colors from a palette 
of 2 56,000. 

The 2 56KTP card comes 




S-Series color-graphics cards from Cromemco. 



with 2 56K bytes of two- 
ported memory; four 
2 56KTP cards are required 
to take advantage of the full 
1024- by 1024-pixel, 2 56- 
color capability of the S- 
Series. The SDCM Color 
Modulator Board converts 
red-green-blue signals to 
broadcast-type composite 



signals meeting either the 
NTSC or PAL standards. 

The S-Series cards allow 
computer-generated or 
digitized graphics to be 
overlaid on other broadcast 
images. A zoom feature 
allows up to 4-to-l enlarge- 
ment of screen areas, while 
a pan feature can be used 



to move through the 1024 
by 1024 image area either 
displaying edges or wrap- 
ping around to the opposite 
side of the image. Image in- 
put and output are possible 
using a wide range of 
devices: Any composite- 
video image can be digi- 
tized by the SDD card, while 
the other cards combine to 
provide output in RGB and 
NTSC and PAL composite- 
video formats. 

The SVID video-generator 
board costs $795, while the 
SDCM modulator card is 
$995. Both are available in 
either NTSC or PAL versions. 
The SDMA controller board 
is $795, and each 2 56KTP 
memory card is $1995. The 
SDD digitizer card, for either 
NTSC or PAL versions, is 
priced at $995. Contact 
Cromemco Inc., 280 Bernar- 
do Ave., POB 7400, Moun- 
tain View, CA 94039, (415) 
964-7400. 
Inquiry 606. 



TI's Arborist, Decision Tree Analysis Software, Supports IBM 



Texas Instruments' Arbor- 
ist, a decision-tree anal- 
ysis software package, runs 
on both the TI Professional 
Computer and IBM's Per- 
sonal Computer. Arborist 
brings quantitative decision- 
making techniques to plan- 
ners using these desktop 
computers. 

In decision-tree analysis, a 
series of multiple chance 
events and possible deci- 
sions is represented by a 
tree structure. If the planner 
can estimate the outcome 
and probability of each in- 
dividual decision or event, 
Arborist can then determine 
the best choice at each 
decision point. 

Arborist is intended 
primarily for people who 
have at least a basic 
understanding of decision- 
tree analysis. It uses a 
graphical display of deci- 



sion-tree structures to aid in 
the decision-making process. 
The program accommodates 
color or monochrome dis- 
plays and the 8087 numeric 
coprocessor. 



Arborist sells for $595. For 
further details, contact Texas 
Instruments Inc.. POB 80963, 
Dallas, TX 75380-9063, (800) 
527-3 500. 
Inquiry 607. 




A decision tree created by TI's Arborist. 



XL/Serve for Macs 

XL/Serve permits the 
Macintosh/XL (formerly 
the Lisa 2/10) to function as 
a disk and print server in an 
AppleTalk Personal Network. 
It lets distributed Macin- 
toshes share disk storage 
and Imagewriter printers. 

XL/Serve includes disk and 
printer software that runs 
concurrently on a host Mac- 
intosh/XL under MacWorks, 
driver software for individual 
Macintoshes, and a backup 
and restore utility. 

You can partition the host 
disk into individual volumes, 
and users can be granted 
read-only or read-write 
status. 

XL/Serve is $200. Contact 
Infosphere Inc., 4730 South- 
west Macadam Ave., Port- 
land, OR 97201, (503) 
226-3515. 
Inquiry 608. 

[continued] 



42 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Borland Does It Again: 
SuperKey $69.95 



Sure, ProKey™ is a nice little program. But when the people who brought you 

Turbo Pascal and SideKick get serious about keyboard enhancers, you can 

expect the impossible ... and we deliver. 



SuperKey 



ProKey 



ALL FEATURES RESIDENT IN RAM AT ALL TIMES 



RESIDENT PULL-DOWN MACRO EDITOR 



RESIDENT FILE ENCRYPTION 




PROKEY COMPATIBILITY 



DISPLAY PROTECTION 



ABILITY TO IMPORT DATA FROM SCREEN 



m 



YES 

^Tyes 

NO YES 

no Si 



I 'yes 



PULL-DOWN MENU USER INTERFACE 



CONTEXT-SENSITIVE ON-LINE HELP SYSTEM 



DISPLAY-ONLY MACRO CREATION 



ENTRY AND FORMAT CONTROL IN DATA FIELDS 



COMMAND KEYS REDEFINABLE "ON THE FLY" 




Total ProKey compatibility. Every Prokey Macro file may be 
used by SuperKey without change so that you may capitalize on 
all the precious time you've invested. 

Now your PC can keep a secret! SuperKey includes a resident 
file encryption system that uses your password to encrypt and 
decrypt files, even while running other programs. Two different 
encryption modes are offered: 

1. Direct overwrite encryption (which leaves the file size un- 
changed) for complete protection. At no point is a second file 
that could be reconstructed by an intruder generated. Without 
your secret password, no one will ever be able to type out your 
confidential letters again! 

2. COM or EXE file encryption which allows you to encrypt a 
binary file into an ASCII file, transmit it through a phone line as a 
text file and turn it back again into an executable file on the 
target machine (only of course if your correspondent knows the 
secret password!). Now, you will even be able to secretly ex- 
change programs through Public Bulletin Board Systems or 
services such as CompuServe. 

Totally memory resident at all times, gives SuperKey the ability 
to create, edit, save and even recall new or existing macro files 
anytime, even while running another program. 

Pull down macro editor. Finally a sensible way to create, edit, 
change and alter existing macro definitions. Even while using 
another application, a simple keystroke instantly opens a 
wordprocessor-like window where you're allowed to see, 
edit, delete, save and even attach names to an indi- 
vidual macro or file of macros, and 
much mora 



12995 



PRICE 



Sony ProKey! 

Superb software at reasonable prices! 

There is much more to SuperKey. Maybe the best 
reason to buy SuperKey is that it is a Borland 
International Product. Each one of our products is 
the best in its category. We only believe in 
absolutely superb software at reasonable prices! 

An offer you can't refuse. 

Whether you are a ProKey user or you've never used a 
keyboard enhancer before, your boat has come in: until 
June 1st 1985 you can get your copy of SuperKey at this 
special introductory price. 

Get your PC a SuperKey today! 

SuperKey is available now for your IBM PC, XT, AT, jr. and truly 
compatible microcomputers. 



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Inquiry 48 



BORlPflD 

INTERNATIONAL 



Software's Newest Direction 

4113 Scons Valley Dave 
Scoits Valley. California 95066 
TELEX 172373 



\ 
\ 

\ 



IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machine Corporation. ProKey is a trademark 
of RoseSoft. SuperKey and SideKick are trademarks of Borland International, Inc. 





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WHAT'S NEW 



Hayes Offers Smartcom II for the Macintosh 



Hayes Microcomputer 
Products has an- 
nounced Smartcom II for 
the Macintosh. The program, 
originally written for the 
IBM PC, has been rede- 
signed to take advantage of 
the Macintosh graphical user 
interface. 

Smartcom II is compatible 
with Hayes's existing stand- 
alone modems and with its 
recently introduced 2400- 
bps Smartmodem. Smart- 
com II can handle com- 
munications between com- 
puters in a hard-wired con- 
figuration at speeds of up to 
19,200 bps. 

Smartcom II has an "auto- 
pilot" feature that can be 
programmed to automatical- 
ly perform such functions as 
logging onto remote sys- 
tems, sending or receiving 



<ft File (dM Connection Settings HutopHot Special 




•w 



Inter phone number: 



9523083 



00 Q Tone puis * 

€H00 p8U$e Q] seconds 

CD (3d) (E} Wait for dtoMone 

000 !}u ' e, Fl8sh 




Smartcom II exploits the Mac's graphical user interface. 

files, and performing data- Protocol and the XMODEM 

base operations. It supports protocol for file transfers. It 
both the Hayes Verification also lets you switch back 



and forth between voice and 
data during a communica- 
tions session. 

Hayes reports that the 
Smartcom II program will 
permit two Macintosh com- 
puters to exchange graphical 
images in real time using 
conventions similar to those 
in MacPaint. An image 
created on one screen is 
automatically reproduced on 
the remote screen. The sec- 
ond user can "take over" 
the drawing and make 
changes and additions. 

The retail price for the 
Smartcom II software for the 
Macintosh is $149. For more 
information, contact Hayes 
Microcomputer Products 
Inc. 5923 Peachtree In- 
dustrial Blvd., Norcross, GA 
30092, (404) 449-8791. 
Inquiry 609. 



Multiuser Board for IBM Based on 68000 



The Multi-PC/68 from 
LinkData is a multiuser 
68000 microprocessor board 
for the IBM Personal Com- 
puter. This two-board com- 
bination runs UNI-DOS, a 
DEC-like operating system 
that lets the PC run multi- 
user software written for the 
DEC PDP-11 family of mini- 
computers. 



When equipped with 
Multi-PC/68, the IBM PC XT 
can support four terminals 
and run five concurrent pro- 
grams written in the DIBOL 
or CADOL minicomputer 
languages. The IBM PC AT 
can support up to eight ter- 
minals and run nine pro- 
grams. In addition, both the 
XT and AT can run MS-DOS 



applications concurrently 
with UNI-DOS applications. 

The dealer price of the 
Multi-PC/68 system, including 
UNI-DOS, ranges from 
$2000 to $4000, depending 
on how much memory and 
how many RS-232C ports 
are included. LinkData will 
also make available to 
dealers a $200 DEC-like 



word processor, a series of 
accounting packages ($295 
each), and a line of vertical- 
market applications pack- 
ages with price tags span- 
ning from $750 to $1000. 
For more information, con- 
tact LinkData, 2005 Route 
22, Union, NJ 07083, (201) 
964-6090. 
Inquiry 610. 



Harmony Comes to Mac 



Harris Announces PC Network/File Server 



Harmony is a set of 
productivity tools that 
runs as a desk accessory on 
the 512K-byte Macintosh or 
as an application program 
on the 128K-byte Macintosh, 
Harmony offers a full data- 
base in which each record 
can hold up to 18 informa- 
tion fields. Harmony has a 
time-manager module with a 
calendar, an appointment 
book with project-manage- 
ment features, a memo 
writer, and a print-spooler 
application that spools files 
from MacWrite and Micro- 



soft Word. 

Other features include a 
telecommunications applica- 
tion with auto-dial capabili- 
ties. Harmony can work in 
concert with Jazz from Lotus 
Development Corporation 
and other Macintosh pro- 
grams. Intermatrix says that 
the program will be avail- 
able in mid-April and that it 
will be priced at $195. Con- 
tact Intermatrix, 5 547 
Satsuma Ave, North 
Hollywood, CA 91601, (818) 
509-0474. 
Inquiry 611. 



The Harris 9300 net- 
work/file server can link 
up to 16 IBM PC-compati- 
bles, 3270 terminals, Harris 
PCs, or printers with a high- 
capacity hard-disk drive and 
a local-area network. 

Devices are linked by a 
coaxial cable with a data- 
flow rate of 1 megabit per 
second. The 9300 uses an 
80286 chip for network pro- 
cessing and supports up to 
80 megabytes of hard-disk 
storage and 2 megabytes of 
memory An optional Z80B 
runs word-processor and 



office-automation programs 
developed by Lanier, a sub- 
sidiary of Harris. 

The system with 1 mega- 
byte of memory, 37 mega- 
bytes of hard-disk storage, 
and hardware for connection 
to the network is about 
$11,000. Adapter cards for 
personal computers are 
$1050 each. Deliveries are 
expected to begin in June. 
Contact Harris Corp., 
Melbourne, FL 32919, (305) 
727-9100. 
Inquiry 612. 

(continued on page 440) 



44 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Speed, Power, Price. 
3or land's Turbo Pascal Family. 



Tfie industry Standard. With more than 250,000 users worldwide Turbo Pascal is the industry's de facto standard 
Turbo Pascal is praised by more engineers, hobbyists, students and professional programmers than any other development 
environment in the history of microcomputing. And yet, Turbo Pascal is simple and fun to use! 

Jeff Duntemann. PC Magazine: "Language deal of the century . . . Turbo Pascal: It introduces a new 
programming environment and runs like magic. " 

Dave Garland, Popular Computing: "Most Pascal compilers barely fit on a disk, but Turbo Pascal packs an editor, compiler, linker, 
and run-time library into just 29K bytes of random-access memory" 

Jerry Pournelle, BYTE: "What I think the computer industry is headed for: well documented, standard, plenty of good features, 
and a reasonable price. " 

Portability Turbo Pascal is available today for most computers running PC DOS, MS DOS, CP/M 80 or CP/M 86. A XENIX verison of Turbo 
Pascal will soon be announced, and before the end of the year, Turbo Pascal will be running on most 68000 based microcomputers. 





High resolution monochrome graphics for the IBM PC and the Zenith 100 computers 



Dazzling 

the expert's 




graphics and painless WindOWS. The Turbo Graphix Toolbox will give even a beginning programmer 

s a complete library of Pascal procedures that include: 

Full graphics window management. 

—Tools that will allow you to draw and hatch pie charts, bar charts, circles, rectangles and a full range of geometric shapes. 
Procedures that will save and restore graphic images to and from disk. 
—Functions that will allow you to precisely plot curves. 

—Tools that will allow you to create animation or solve those difficult curve fitting problems, 
and much, much more ..... 

No Sweat and no royalties. You may incorporate part, or all of these tools in your programs, 
and yet, we won't charge you any royalties. Best of all, these functions and procedures come complete 
with commented source code on disk ready to compile! 





Searching and sorting made simple 

The perfect Complement tO Turbo Pascal. It contains: Turbo-Access, a powerful implementation of the state-of-the-art B+tree ISAM 
technique; Turbo-Sort, a super efficient implementation of the fastest data sorting algorithm, "Quicksort on disk". And much more. 

Jerty Pournelle, BYTE: The tools include a B+tree search and a sorting system, I've seen stuff like this, but not 
as well thought out, sell for hundreds of dollars," 

Get Started right away: free database! Included on every Toolbox disk is the source code to a working 
data base which demonstrates how powerful and easy to use the Turbo-Access system really is. 
Modify it to suit your individual needs or just compile it and run. 

Remember, no royalties! 





From Start to finish in 300 pages. Turbo Tutor 

is for everyone, from novice to expert. Even if you've never 
programmed before, Turbo Tutor will get you started right away 
If you already have some experience with Pascal or another 
programming language. Turbo Tutor will take you step by step 
through topics like data structures and pointers. If you're an expert, 
you'll love the sections detailing subjects such as "how to use assem- 
bly language routines with your Turbo Pascal programs." 

A must. You'll find the source code for all 
the examples in the book on the accompanying 
disk ready to compile. Turbo Tutor might be 
the only reference on Pascal and pro- 
gramming you 





nearest V° a 

Mine is: — -pC-DOS -~~ C p/M 8b 

, use. -grfWjjS*.- 



J 54.95 — -" 

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BORlAflD 

INTERNATIONAL 



Ttirfco Pascal is a repstered trademark of BoriantJ international. Inc. 




* 



Introducing PC software 
the right way to do 



IBM's new Personal Decision Series. 
A powerful team of business 
programs designed for exceptional 
flexibility. 

There's rarely one best way of doing 
anything. 

Rather, lots of very good ways: a 
reality that IBM's Personal Decision 
Series handily accommodates. 

More than any software we know of. 
it gives you choices. \bu tailor it to your 



needs, instead of vice versa. 

You begin with Data Edition, a pro- 
gram that not only manages huge 
amounts of information, but letsyou take 
it from a surprising variety of sources: 
data banks, mainframes, even files cre- 
ated by other 1 IX 1 programs. 

And you can retrieve your data in 
nearly an\ form you like, without a lot of 
headscratdiing. You can begin produc- 
ing real work in a couple of hours. 

Add Report s+ and \ou can create 



your- own style documents, pulling facts 
from up to 6 Data files at a time, in 
formats you can design, for applications 
you can invent. 

Graphs gives you a choice of 13 
graph styles, with over 20 variations. 
And you can update old graphs without 



Data 



Reports* 






IBM 



IBM 



With IBMs ne* Personal Decision Series. 
\(iij start toith Data Edition, adding others, like 
Reports* or f'fatis. as yon like. 

For even more help, you can add Apnoint- 



46 BYTE 



APRIL 1985 




based on the curious notion that 
thi ngs is any way you want to. 



having to make new ones. 

There's also Plans + for financial 
modeling and spreadsheets, and Words 
for putting your sentences, numbers and 
graphs all together. 

The Personal Decision Series can 
even take information from a number of 



- 



Graphs 



Pians+ 









IBM 



meni Calendar, Client Time/Cost Accounting, and 
Prospect 1 racking Editions. 

Also, tlic Personal Decision Series works 
wit li data from IBM's new Business Management 



non-Series programs. So if you already 
have a favorite spreadsheet or writing 
program, you ma\ still be able to use it. 

You can even use files from an IBM 
System/36 or- System/370 computer; by 
adding an Attachment I'M) or /'A70 Edition. 

All of which is perfect for* people 




Series, a powerful fainih of accounting programs. 
And ask about IBM Kxtended Support ser- 
vices, a wa> to^et software updates and telephone 
assistance direct from IBM. 



who insist on doing tilings their way. 
Do you know somebody like that'/ 
lb learn more, call an IBM market- 
ing representative, or visit an IBM Pro- 
duct Center or authorized IBM PC dealer. 
For the store nearest vou. and a free 
brochure, call 800- -147- 4700. (In Alaska 
and Hawaii. 800-447-0890.) 



Personal ( Computer Software 



Little Tramp character licensed by Bubbles Inc., s.a. 
Inquiry 194 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 47 



ASK BYTE 



Conducted by Steve Ciarcia 



Elementary Information 

Dear Steve, 

Can you tell me where I can get specific 
and in-depth answers to elementary ques- 
tions about computers and electronics? I 
know that you answer questions, but I also 
know that you couldn't be expected to 
give very lengthy answers to my beginner's 
questions. 

Charles F. Porter 
Cedar Rapids, I A 

The Ask BYTE column addresses hard- 
ware-related questions of general interest 
but is not meant for the beginner. BYTE's 
sister publication, Popular Computing, 
caters to a less technical audience, and 
its Ask Popular column addresses ques- 
tions related to computers in general. 
Both publications may answer your 
specific question, but the turnaround 
time is lengthy. 

If you need specific answers to specific 
questions in a reasonable amount of 
time, try a local computer club There is 
usually an "expert' available on almost 
any topic. Failing that, the local bookstore 
will feature many books on computers 
and computer-related material.— Steve 



S-100 Switching Supply 

Dear Steve, 

Will you be doing an article on a switch- 
ing power supply for the S-100 bus? 

I hear that switching supplies are less ex- 
pensive to build than linear supplies; the 
selling prices 1 have seen are not less. 
Could Micromint offer a power-supply kit 
for this purpose? 

Ernest A. Knipp 
Houston, TX 

A switching power supply for S-100- 
type computers is a good idea, and I will 
consider it for a future article. 

The cost of switching-type power sup- 
plies is usually less than linear-regulated 
supplies of comparable power because 
smaller capacitors and inductors are used 
and can be packaged in a smaller 
volume. They also generate less heat and 
are easier to cool, resulting in a lower 



overall installed cost. 

If you want to build your own switch- 
ing supply my article in the November 
1981 BYTE provides the basics. "Switch- 
ing Power Supplies: An Introduction'' 
covers the fundamentals of design and 
describes a workable unit This article 
isn 't a do-it-yourself S-100 power-supply 
project, but it should give you most of the 
basics. 

Several ± 12-V, 5-V switching supplies 
are available commercially, including the 
MPX-IO (from Micromint 561 Willow Ave. 
Cedar hurst, NY II 51 6), which powers the 
MPX-16 computer. Others are available 
from Kepco Inc., 131-38 San ford Ave., 
Flushing, NY H352; Lambda Electronics, 
515 Broad Hollow Rd., Melville, NY 
1 1 74 7: and Sorensen, 6 76 Island Pond 
Rd., Manchester, NH 03103 .—Steve 



Graphic-Arts Computer 

Dear Steve, 

1 would like to do graphic-arts work with 
a computer capable of producing a 
minimum of about 800 by 800 pixels and 
at least 100 simultaneously displayable 
colors. I have seen ads for various color 
boards or dedicated graphics computers, 
but they either don't match my specs or 
they are too expensive. 

I'd like to build my own color add-on 
board for the Commodore 64 or a com- 
plete computer. I'd appreciate any 
suggestions. 

Les Kohuth 
Syosset, NY 

High-resolution graphics systems are 
expensive and seem overpriced in com- 
parison to the graphics systems available 
on microcomputers. To understand this 
high cost, let's look at the components 
of a high-resolution graphics system. 

To display the resolution that you men- 
tioned, a monitor with a video band- 
width of at least 1 8 to 20 MHz is needed 
to distinguish individual pixels, or dots. 
This requirement can be understood if 
we look at the makeup of one scan line 
of the picture. 

The normal scan rate is 15,750 scans 
per second, and at 800 pixels of hori- 



zontal resolution, this is 1 2,600,000 pixels 
per second. However, the case where all 
the pixels are lit results in a zero-band- 
width requirement, and a DC voltage is 
all that is required. In the worst case, 
when every other pixel is lit, a clear dis- 
play of 6 million pixels per second is 
needed. This appears to require only a 
6-MHz bandwidth, but bandwidth is 
usually defined as the frequency where 
the signal (or gain) is reduced by 3 dB, 
or 50 percent of the normal level. Such 
a bandwidth would result in low bright- 
ness and contrast in picture areas where 
fine detail is shown. To display sharp im- 
ages at this resolution, it is necessary to 
approximate a square wave at 6 MHz, 
and the first component of a square wave 
above the fundamental is the third har- 
monic, or 18 MHz. This is the minimum 
acceptable, and a noticeable improve- 
ment should be seen if the bandwidth is 
extended to the next component, which 
is the fifth harmonic (30 MHz). 

The standard television sweep frequen- 
cies generate 525 horizontal lines per 
frame in two vertical scans (interlaced). 
A limit of about 400 lines within this 
region is required for good linearity. Most 
microcomputer graphics systems provide 
200 or so lines by using the so-called 
noninterlace mode, displaying the same 
information on adjacent pairs of lines. 
This can be doubled by using twice as 
much memory and reprogramming the 
video controller. Getting to 800 lines re- 
quires twice as many horizontal sweeps 
per frame (and half the frame rate), which 
is not within the capabilities of the 
popular $500 RGB monitors. Monitors of 
this type are available, but the prices are 
in the several-thousand-dollar range. 

800 by 800 pixels requires 640K bits, 
or about 80K bytes, of memory to give 
one color (we get black for free). If you 
want to be able to assign different colors 
to each pixel, rather than define charac- 
ters within a block of 8 by 8 contiguous 
pixels, the memory is arranged in layers. 
One 80K-byte layer gives black and white, 
two layers doubles this to four colors 
(three colors plus black), another layer 
doubles again, etc., for as many colors 
as we want, or can afford. Your spec of 

{continued) 



48 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



COPYRIGHT© 1985 STEVEN A. CIARCIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 







lector's item— an originally 
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For the name of the 
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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 49 



Inquiry 2 79 




IEEE-488 Interfaces and 
Bus Extenders For: 

IBM PC, PCjr 
& COMPATIBLES 

DEC UNIBUS, Q-BUS 
& RAINBOW 100 

MULTIBUS, VMEbus 
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trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation 



ASK BYTE 



"at least IOO colors" rounds up to 128, 
or seven layers of memory. This is $700 
worth of memory chips, if you can use 
the low-cost 64K-byte chips in common 
use for microcomputer memory these 
days. Add board space and sockets and 
do the work yourself, and you're still talk- 
ing $1000 for memory and this type of 
memory really isn't suitable for a high- 
performance graphics board. You really 
need a two-port system so that putting 
data into the memory doesn't interfere 
with the display and vice versa. 

This amount of memory exceeds the 
addressing capacity of all the common 
video-controller chips. Also, 6 million 
pixels must be read from memory each 
second. At 7 bits per pixel, the processor 
must access 7 5 OK bytes from each layer 
each second, or a total of 5.25 mega- 
bytes per second throughput if only one 
processor is used. This is too fast for in- 
expensive video processors, or micropro- 
cessors, so either parallel or very fast 
processors with bank switching are 
needed. Such circuitry is complicated, 
and considerable processing is required 
to separate the data into the required 
RGB analog signals. 

Some boards, or add-on systems, are 
available for the IBM PC and some of its 
clones that can provide various combina- 
tions of features at reasonable cost One 
such system is the VX, made by Vectrix 
Corporation, 1416 Boston Rd., Greens- 
boro, NC 27407. This appears to require 
a special monitor, however 

Other systems that are compatible with 
common RGB monitors and provide up 
to 16 colors at 640- by 400-pixel resolu- 
tion and 132 colors at 320 by 200 resolu- 
tion are available from $300 to around 
$1000. Check advertisements for prod- 
ucts made by Qua dram, Princeton 
Graphics, and Tecmar Inc. in magazines 
like BYTE to find some that might repre- 
sent a satisfactory compromise. Another 
good source for information on this sub- 
ject is Electronic Imaging magazine. 
—Steve 



Reconfiguring the PC XT 

Dear Steve. 

I have two questions that I would like to 
have answers for. They both relate to the 
IBM PC XT. After devouring your most in- 
teresting articles and answers in BYTE. I 
believe you can answer them. 

The XT comes equipped with an asyn- 
chronous communications card con- 
figured as COM1. 1 have installed a Hayes 



internal modem that for compatibility with 
some important software I have to use as 
COM! . I have had to remove the IBM asyn- 
chronous card because I don't know how 
to reconfigure it to be COM2. There are 
no switches on it or any documentation 
on how this might be done. I have been 
told that it is possible, but no one has 
been able to tell me how to do it. 

There are times when I really don't need 
to use my hard disk, such as when I am 
working for hours on a mainframe and just 
using my XT as a terminal. Since my war- 
ranty has expired anyway I don't mind ex- 
perimenting if I have some expert 
guidance. Would there be any way to boot 
my system without the hard disk, when it 
is not needed, by installing a switch some- 
place? If this is possible, would it be worth 
saving a few hours of idle running time on 
the hard disk? 1 know it would be quieter 
and more enjoyable working without it 
when I don't need it. 

Bob Stephan 
Pebble Beach, CA 

Modifying the IBM asynchronous card 
to make it operate as COM2 is feasible. 
The port addresses used by COM I are 
3F8H to 3FFH. while COM2 uses 2F8H 
to 2FFH. The schematic in the IBM PC 
Technical Reference Manual shows a 
jumper that determines whether the card 
is selected with A8 equal to or 1, al- 
though neither the documentation that 
comes with the card nor the Technical 
Reference Manual makes reference to 
this. The jumper is probably soldered in 
and may not be there on all boards. 

Modifying the main system board to 
start up without the fixed disk is an 
operation I don't recommend. The in- 
crease in life of the fixed disk is probably 
minimal, and turning it on and off when 
you need it might offset any gain realized 
by not running it full time. 1 also suspect, 
based on my experience with IBM PCs, 
that the fan makes as much noise as the 
disk, so there is little to be gained—Steve 



Reading Latch Outputs 

Dear Steve, 

I have a Sinclair 1000 that I'm trying to 
use in a security system. In my system, 
octal latches monitor infrared beams. 
When a beam is broken, my program ad- 
dresses a latch at an address above RAM 
and uses a POKE to put a 1 in the latch 
to ring the bell. This works fine. The prob- 
lem is when 1 try to check the octal latches 

(continued) 



50 



BYTE* APRIL 1985 



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But now there's a solution you can af- 
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And when the AC line fails, the SPS goes into full 

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with the PEEK command, instead of see- 
ing the latch, it reads garbage. 1 have tried 
addresses just above RAM all the way up 
to address 65535. and 1 still read garbage. 
It appears that when you check an ad- 
dress that is above RAM it mirrors back 
to a RAM or ROM address. Can you tell 
me how I can address and see my octal 
latches instead of mirroring back to RAM? 
Thanks for your help. 

Dan Grogan 
San Pedro, CA 

It appears that your Sinclair 1000 is not 
reflecting your PEEK commands back 
into low memory As I interpret your let- 
ter you have a set of latches that are sup- 
posed to put data on the bus to tell the 
computer that a detector has been 
tripped, and you are having trouble 
reading the latch outputs. 

Are you sure that the address decoder 
on the latch board is set to the address 
to which you are writing? Is it properly 
timed to put the data on the bus at the 
right time or hold it there long enough 
to be recognized by the processor? The 
fact that you can write a bit into the bell 
latch seems to indicate that you are able 
to address the high memory, but the tim- 
ing in writing data into the latch could be 
a lot less critical than reading data. 

Have you looked at the signals at the 
latch outputs and on the data bus to be 
sure that they are putting out the correct 
voltage levels? How about signal quali- 
ty? The level is fairly easy to get with TTL 
or CMOS chips if the power-supply volt- 
age is at the required 5 volts, but if the 
wiring connecting the latches to the com- 
puter bus isn't properly dressed, you can 
do horrible things to the normally clean 
square waves put out by the latches. 
—Steve 



A/D FOR Z- 100 



Dear Steve, 

I have a Zenith Z-100 computer with two 
disk drives and with 192K bytes of 
memory. Now I am thinking of providing 
an A/D interface for the serial input so that 
I can feed in analog signals from various 
instruments, such as a spectrophotometer 
pH meter, etc Looking through the jour- 
nals 1 located a few suppliers, though 
mostly of rather fancy multichannel data- 
acquisition units I do not need. At the 
most, 1 need four channels of input with- 
out any specialties attached. I would ap- 
preciate it if you could let me know of any 

[continued) 



52 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 353 




viztec The Most Powerful C 



for the IBM AT • MACINTOSH • MS DOS • CP/M-80 • ROM APPLICATIONS 
IBM PC/XT • APPLE // • CP/M-86 • TRSDOS • CROSS DEVELOPMENT 



Why Professionals Choose Aztec C 

AZTEC C compilers generate fast, compact 
code. AZTEC C is a sophisticated development 
system with assemblers, debuggers, linkers, 
editors, utilities and extensive run time libraries. 
AZTEC C is documented in detail. AZTEC C is 
the most accurate and portable implementation 
of C for microcomputers. AZTEC C supports 
specialized professional needs such as cross 
development and ROM code development. 
MANX provides qualified technical support. 

AZTEC C86/PRO 
— for the IBM AT and PC/XT 

AZTEC C86/PRO provides the power, portabili- 
ty, and professional features you need to 
develop sophisticated software for PC DOS, MS 
DOS AND CP/M-86 based microsystems. The 
system also supports the generation of ROM 
based software for 8088/8086, 80186, and 80286 
processors. Options exist to cross develop ROM 
code for 65xx, 8080, 8085, and Z80 processors. 
Cross development systems are also available 
that target most micro computers. Call for infor- 
mation on AZTEC C86/PRO support for XENIX 
andTOPVIEW. 



POWERFUL - AZTEC C86/PRO 3.2 outper- 
forms Lattice 2.1 on the DHRYSTONE 
benchmark 2 to 1 for speed (17.8 sees vs 37.1) 
while using 65% less memory (5.8k vs 14k). The 
AZTEC C86/PRO system also compiles in 10% 
to 60% less time and supports fast, high volume 
I/O. 



PORTABLE — MANX Software Systems pro- 
vides real portability with a family of compatible 
AZTEC C software development systems for PC 
DOS, MS DOS, CP/M-86, Macintosh, CP/M-80, 
APPLE //+ , //e, and //c (NIBBLE - 4 apple rating), 
TRSDOS (80-MICRO - 5 star rating), and Commo- 
dore C64 (the C64 system is only available as a 
cross compiler - call for details). AZTEC 
C86/PRO is compatible with UNIX and XENIX. 



PROFESSIONAL — For professional features 
AZTEC C86/PRO is unparalleled. 

• Full C Compiler (8088/8086 - 80186 - 80286) 

• Macro Assembler for 8088/8086/80186/80286 

• Linkage Editor with ROM support and overlays 

• Run Time Libraries - object libraries + source 
DOS 1.x; DOS 2.x; DOS 3.x; screen I/O; Graphics; 
UNIX I/O; STRING; simulated float; 8087 support; 
MATH; ROM; CP/M-86 

• Selection of 8088/8086, 80186, or 80286 code genera- 
tion to guarantee best choice for performance and 
compatibility 



• Utility to convert AZTEC object code or libraries to 
Microsoft format. (Assembly + conversion takes 
less than half the time as Microsoft's MASM to pro- 
duce MS object) 

• Large memory models and sophisticated memory 
management 

• Support products for graphics, DB, Screen, & ... 

• ROMable code + ROM support + separate code and 
data + INTEL Hex Converter 

• Symbolic Debugger & Other Utilities 

• Full Screen Editor (like Vi) 

• CROSS Compilers are available to APPLE //, Macin- 
tosh, CP/M-80, TRSDOS, COMMODORE C64, and 
ROM based 65xx, and 8080/8085/Z80 

• Detailed Documentation 

AZTEC C86/PRO-AT $500 

(configured for IBM AT - options for 8088/8086) 

AZTEC C86/PRO-PC/XT $500 

(configured for IBM PC/XT - options for 80186/80286) 

AZTEC C86/BAS includes C compiler (small model only), 
8086 MACRO assembler, overlay linker, UNIX, MATH, 
SCREEN, and GRAPHICS libraries, debugger, and 
editor. 

AZTEC C86/BAS $199 

AZTEC C86/BAS (CP/M-86) $199 

AZTEC C86/BAS (DOS + CP/M-86) $299 

UPGRADE to AZTEC C86/PRO $310 

CTREE Database with source .$399 

CTREE Database (object) $149 

CROSS COMPILERS 
Cross Compilers for ROM, MS DOS, PC DOS, or CP/M-86 
applications. 

VAX - > 8086/80xxx cross $5000 

PDP-1 1 - > 8086/80XXX cross $2000 

Cross Compilers with PC DOS or CP/M-86 hosts are $750 
for the first target and $500 for each additional target. 
Targets: 65xx; CP/M-80; C64; 8080/8085 /Z80; Macintosh; 
TRSDOS; 8086/8088/80186/80286; APPLE //. 



AZTEC C68K 

— for the Macintosh 

For power, portability, and professional features 
AZTEC C68K-C is the finest C software development 
system available for the Macintosh. 

The AZTEC C68K-C system includes a 66000 macro 
assembler, a linkage editor, a source editor, a mouse 
based editor, a SHELL development environment, a 
library of UNIX I/O and utility routines, full access and 
support of the Macintosh TOOLBOX routines, debug- 
ging aides, utilities, make, diff, grep, TTY simulator with 
upload & download (source supplied), a RAM disk (for 
51 2K Mac), a resource maker, and a no royalty license 
agreement. Programming examples are included. (Over 
600 pages of documentation). 

AZTEC C68K-C requires a 128K Macintosh, 
and two disk drives (frugal developers can make 
do with one drive). AZTEC C68K supports the 
512K Macintosh and hard disks. 

AZTEC C68K-C (commercial system) $500 

AZTEC C68K-p (personal system) $199 

AZTEC C68K-p to AZTEC C68K-C upgrade $310 



Mac C-tree database $149 

Mac C-tree database with source $399 

Lisa Kit (Pascal to AZTEC C68k object converter) . . $ 99 



AZTEC C65 

"...The AZTEC C-system is one of the finest software 
packages i have seen..." NIBBLE review, July 1984. 

The only commercial C development system available 
that runs native on the APPLE II + , lie, and lie, the 
AZTEC C65 development system includes a full floating 
point C compiler compatible with UNIX C and other 
MANX AZTEC C compilers, a 6502 relocating assem- 
bler, a linkage editor, a library utility, a SHELL develop- 
ment environment, a full screen editor, UNIX I/O and 
utility subroutines, simple graphics, and screen func- 
tions. 

AZTEC C65 (Apple DOS 3.3) $199 

AZTEC C65/PRO (Apple DOS + ProDos) $350 

(call for availability) 



AZTEC C ll/PRO 

— for CP/M-80 

The first member of the AZTEC C family was the 
CP/M-80 AZTEC C compiler. It is "the standard" com- 
piler for development on CP/M-80. The system includes 
the AZTEC CMC compiler, an 8080 assembler, a linkage 
editor, an object librarian, a full library of UNIX I/O and 
utility routines, CP/M-80 run time routines, the SMALL 
library (creates modules less than 3K in size), the fast 
linker for reduced development times, the ROM library, 
RMAC and M80 support, library source, support for 
DRI's SID/ZSID symbolic debugger, and more. 

AZTEC C ll/PRO $349 

AZTEC Cli/BAS $199 

CTREE Database with source $399 

CTREE Database in AZTEC object form .$149 



AZTEC C80 

— for TRSDOS (Radio Shack Model III & 4) 

'7 Ve had a lot of experience with different C compilers, 
but the Aztec C80 Compiler and Professional Develop- 
ment System is the best I've seen." 80-Micro, Decem- 
ber, 1984, John B. Harrell III 

This sytem has most of the features of AZTEC C II for 
CP/M. It is perhaps the best software development 
system for the Radio Shack Model III and IV. 

AZTEC C80 model 3 (no floating point) $149 

AZTEC C80 model 4 (full) $199 

AZTEC C80/PRO (full for model 3 and 4) $299 



.11 



1-221-0440 

(201) 530-7997 (NJ and outside U.S.A.). Or write: MANX 
SOFTWARE SYSTEMS, P.O. Box 55, Shrewsbury, N.J. 
07701 



MANX 

TRS 80 RADIO SHACK TRS DOS is a trademark of TANDY 
APPLE DOS MACINTOSH is a trademark of APPLE. 




SHIPPING INFORMATION - Standard U.S. 
shipment is UPS ground {no fee). In the U.S. 
one day shipment is $20, two days is $10. 
Canadian shipment is $10. Two days ship- 
ment outside the U.S. is by courier and is 
freight collect. 



For Technical Support 
(Bug Busters) call: 201-530-6557 



Inquiry 247 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 53 




ASK BYTE 



CLEAN THE MACHINE! 



There's enough to worry about without 
the headache of your computer's down- 
time or the loss of valuable data caused 
by dust. 

Before dust affects your computer's 
operation do what a rapidly growing 
number of computer users do: use Dust- 
Off® II. Don't just move dust — remove 



STAT-OFF IF 
neutralizes 
dust- holding 
static electricity 
from media and 
machines. 



it. Unlike liquid cleaners, Dust-Off II is a 
safe, dry "canned air" cleaning system 
for your computers, printers, disk and 
tape drives, diskettes, CRTs, media 
storage containers and modems. In 
fact, it works on everything that works 
in the office. 

Dust-Off II's patented valve gives 
you pinpoint fingertip-control to blast 
away pollutants before they cause 
aggravating downtime. Add the Stat- 
Off® II accessory, and you have the only 
dry, non-contact method for eliminating 



dust-holding static electricity. The Dust- 
Off II system also includes the Dual Ex- 
tender and the Mini-Vac vacuum for 
eliminating hard-to-reach dust. 

Get Dust-Off II at your local com- 
puter or office supply dealer. Or send 
$1.00 {postage and handling) for a 3 oz. 
trial size and literature. 





DustOffll 

THE SAFE, DRY, "CANNED AIR"CIEANING SYSTEM. 



such units on the market. 

Herbert Jonas 
St. Paul, MN 

Analog Devices (2 Technology Way, 
Norwood. MA 02062, (617) 329-4700} 
makes the /iMAC-4000 series data-acqui- 
sition systems that provide up to 12 chan- 
nels of 1 3 -bit A/D input/output and serial 
communication, priced at $995 and up. 

Two other units that interface through 
RS-232Carethe 16<hannel, 12-bit ADC-I 
from Remote Measurement Systems Inc., 
POB 15544, Seattle, WA 98115, (206) 
525-3369. It's advertised at $369. Also 
available is the BUSSter D16 8-bit, 
16-channel unit from Connecticut micro- 
Computer The address is 36 Del Mar Dr., 
Brookfield, CT 06804, (203) 775-4595. 

All three of the above units accept 
digital inputs as well as analog. 

Since your Z-100 uses the S-100 bus, 
you might also want to consider the plug- 
in AIM-12 S-100 board from Dual Sys- 
tems Corp.. 2530 San Pablo Ave., 
Berkeley. CA 94702, (415) 549-3854. This 
unit provides for 16 channels of input 
with 12-bit conversion, priced at $775. 
—Steve ■ 

Between Circuit Cellar Feedback, personal ques- 
tions, and Ask BYTE, I receive hundreds of letters 
each month. As you might have noticed, at the end 
of Ask BYTE I have listed my own paid staff. We 
answer many more letters than you see published. 
and it often takes a lot of research. 

\f you would like to share the knowledge you have 
on microcomputer hardware with other BYTE 
readers, joining the Circuit Cellar! Ask BYTE staff 
would give you the opportunity. Wre looking for 
additional researchers to answer letters and gather 
Circuit Cellar project material. 

\f you're interested, let us hear from you. Send 
a short letter describing your areas of interest and 
qualifications to Steve Garcia, POB 582, Glaston- 
bury, CT 06033. 



IN ASK BYTE, Steve Garcia answers questions 
on any area of microcomputing. The most rep- 
resentative questions received each month will be 
answered and published. Do you have a nag- 
ging problem? Send your inquiry to 

Ask BYTE 

do Steve Ciarcia 

POB 582 

Glastonbury, CT 06033 
Due to the high volume of inquiries, personal 
replies cannot be given. All letters and photo- 
graphs become the property of Steve Ciarcia and 
cannot be returned. Be sure to include "Ask 
BYTE" in the address. 

The Ask BYTE staff includes manager Harv 
Werner and researchers Bill Curlew, Larry 
Bregoli. Dick Sawyer, and \eannette Dojan. 



Falcon Safety Products, Inc., Dept. B, 1065 Bristol Road, Mountainside, N.J. 07092. U.S.A. 

54 BYTE • APRIL 1985 Inquiry I5I 



Now Showing 
In Black And White 



tf you own an IBM-PC 
or PC work-alike, 
Roland's new MB-142 
monitor lets you show off 
your text and graphics in 
today's hottest colors— 
black and white. That's 
right! The MB-142 gives 
you black characters on a 
paper-white background- 
just like people have been 
reading for centuries. You 
can also have white char- 
acters on a black back- 
ground with just the touch 
of a button. 

Both of these black and 
white display formats are 
easier on the eyes and 
less fatiguing than the green 
or amber phosphor used in 
standard monochrome 
monitors. The MB-142's 
large 14-inch screen, com- 
bined with its ultra-high 
720 x 350 resolution, 
can display characters 
that are larger and 
more legible than what 
you can get with ordi- 
nary monochrome 
monitors. Another 
great plus is that the 
MB-142 plugs directly 
into the monochrome 
board of your IBM or com- 
patible—just like your pres- 
ent monochrome monitor, 
with nothing more to buy. 
Because of the MB-142's 
advanced electronic cir- 
cuitry, you even have the 
ability to mix graphics and 
text on the same display 
when using graphics and text 
boards from leading manu- 
facturers such as Persyst, 
STB, Paradise, Hercules, AST 
and many others. What makes 
it all possible? The same 
sophisticated technology 
used in color monitors. 



Inquiry 336 





the MB-142 
supports 
all the 
winning 
cards 



' ush a 
button for 
instant reverse 
screen 




the big difference is 
► that the MB-142 
monitor does the job for 
significantly less money. 
The MB-142 is designed 
to interface economically, 
too. Imagine seeing your 
favorite business graphics 
or CAD/CAM packages, 
such as Lotus 1-2-3, Ener- 
graphics, Chart-Master, 
AutoCAD, CADDraft and 
VersaCAD, in ultra-high 
resolution black and 
white. Also, take full 
advantage of your pro- 
gram's windowing 
capability using the large 
14-inch screen. 
T^ke a good look at the 
differences that set the 
MB-142 apart from the rest. 
No other monochrome 
monitor gives you the 
fatigue-free black and 
white viewing, text and 
graphics capabilities 
and easy interface. 
Naturally enough, 
the MB-142 is from 
Roland DG-the 
new computer 
peripherals company 
that's pointing the way 
to the future. Look for 
this and other Roland 
products at fine com- 
puter dealers 
everywhere. 
For more information, 
contact: Roland DG, 
7200 Dominion Circle, Los 
Angeles, CA 90040. 
(213) 685-5141. 



The software programs listed are trademarks 
of the following companies: AutoCAD. 
AUTODESK, Inc.; CADDraft, Personal CAD 
Systems, Inc.; Chart-Master, Decision 
Resources, Inc.; Energraphics, Enertronic 
Research, Inc.; Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Develop- 
ment Corp.; VersaCAD. T&W Systems, Inc. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 55 



■ 



:i^5^ 



EVEREX. EVER 






M 









I - 







Illllllllllllllll 








Innovative, Highest Quality Products From 



BACKUP SYSTEMS 

Internal 

• Streaming Tape 

• Cassette 

• Floppy Tape 
External 

A selection of Streaming Tape, Cassette and 

Floppy Tape systems in either individual units or 

combined with hard disk drives and expansion 

slots. 

Unique Features: 

• Space-saving half-height infernal systems 

• Backup capacities up to 100 MB 

• Fast image backup-ten megabytes backed 
up in minutes 

• File-by-file and mirror image backup and 
restore 

• EXCLUSIVE file-by-file restore from a fast 
mirror image backup 

• Easy to use software, simply press a key— no 
complex commands 

• Largest selection of backup/ retrieve options 

EXPANSION SYSTEMS 

Everex offers a complete line to choose from . . . 

• Full -Size system with eight expansion slots 
and room to add up to four storage/backup 
systems. 

• Half-Size system with three expansion slots 
and space for two storage/backup systems. 

• Slimline system, only 2 1 2 -inches high with 
three full-size, one half-size expansion slots 
and room for two storage/backup systems. 

• All Expansion systems are available with any 
combination of Everex hard disk drive and 
backup systems. 



Replace the clumsy flat ribbon cable 
with Everex' s shielded, round cable. 




Unique Features: 

• Advanced design eliminates "wait states" 
faster data transmission 

• Highest quality round cables (as IBM) instead 
of flat ribbon cables 

HARD DISK DRIVE SYSTEMS 

Choose from a wide selection of models to meet 
your needs: 

—space-saving internal systems 

-external systems with extra expansion slots 

• Capacities from 10 to 32 megabytes 

• Factory tested for trouble-free operation 

GRAPHICS PRODUCTS 

Everex offers a complete line of graphics 

products to choose from . . . 

The Edge Color/Monochrome adapter 

• Runs color software on your IBM mono- 
chrome display with a FULL SCREEN in 16 
shades, no software patches needed 

• High resolution, 720x348, monochrome 
graphics 

• Operates Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony and other 
popular programs in an extended 132 column 
by 44 or 25 row display in HIGH resolution 
monochrome 

• Printer connection 

Graphics Edge Color/Monochrome adapter 
Similar features as the Edge but also offers: 

• More high resolution colors: 16 in 640x200 
graphics 

















:c 


E 


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U-3C— ** 

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• 



• ■ 

* '% S is -^i "I 

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The Company That Stands For Excellence... 



• Displays the same information on a color AND 
monochrome monitor simultaneously 

Dual Graphics Color/Monochrome adapter 

• Works with high resolution color AND mono- 
chrome displays 

• Operates Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony and other 
popular programs in an extended 132 column 
by 44 or 25 row display 

• More exciting colors: 16 colors in 640x200 
and 320x200 graphics 

• Printer connection 

Graphics Pacer Monochrome adapter and 
Floppy Disk Controller 

• Runs sharp, high resolution monochrome 
graphics 

• Operates up to four floppy disk and floppy 
tape drives 

• Printer connection 

• Uses only one expansion slot 
Evergraphics Monochrome adapter 

• Operates crisp, high resolution monochrome 
graphics 

• Includes printer and light pen connections 

COMMUNICATIONS AND MULTIFUNCTION 

Evercom Internal Modem 

Gives you all of the features found in modems 

costing hundreds more: 

• Fully Hayes and Bell 103/212A compatible 

• Data transmission speeds in either 300 or 
1200 bps 

• Automatic dial and answer 

• Works with tone and pulse phone systems 

• Voice AND data communications 

• Built-in speaker with software volume control 

• Includes powerful, easy to use software 



MagicCard Multifunction adapter 

• Adds more memory to your computer-up to 
384K 

• Serial connection for modems, printers, plot- 
ters and more 

• Printer connection 

• Game paddle/joystick connection 

• Reliable clock/calendar with battery back-up 

• FORM MANAGER electronic filing system and 
form creator 

• PC WRITE easy to use word processing 
program 

• With printer spooler, electronic disk drive and 
more 

Excellence is the standard at Everex-it's in our 
name, our products, in everything we do. When 
you look for the best for your computer-you'll 
find Everex products. 

Visit your local Everex dealer today and ask to 
see Everex products in action. For the name of 
your nearest Everex dealer, please call (415) 
498-1111. 

Dealer Hotline: (800) 821 -0806. In CA (800) 821 -0807. 

Address: 47777 Warm Springs Blvd., Fremont. CA 94539 (415) 498-1111 . 

IBM, PC, XT and AT are registered trademarks of International Business 

Machines Corporation. 

Excel, The Edge, Dual Graphics, Graphics Edge, Graphics Pacer, 

Evergraphics, Evercom and MagicCard are trademarks of Everex 

Systems Inc. 

Form Manager is a trademark of BIT Software Inc. 

PC Write is a trademark of Quicksort Inc. 




EVER for Excellence 

Inquiry 1 46 



CLUBS & NEWSLETTERS 



• FUTURE INTELLIGENCE 

A monthly newsletter 
devoted to tracking future 
computing technologies 
emphasizes research and 
business. Areas covered in- 
clude artificial intelligence, 
supercomputers, parallel 
processing, expert systems, 
natural language, and voice/ 
speech/pattern recognition 
and synthesis. An annual 
subscription is $295. Con- 
tact Ed Rosen f eld, Intelligence. 
POB 20008. New York. NY 
1002 5. 

• BASED IN THE BAY 

A nonprofit users group for 
Sanyo computerists, the Bay 
Area Sanyo Enthusiast 
(BASE) welcomes anyone 
interested in computers. 
Regular meetings are held. 
Contact Lee Swearingen at 
(813) 788-7865 or Dave Rob- 
bins at (813) 886-7751 or 
write BASE, POB 260517. 
Tampa, FL 33685. 

• CHUGGING ALONG 

The Capitol Heath Users 
Group (CHUG) meets on the 
third Monday of every 
month at the Fairfax High 
School in Virginia. Members 
operate two 24-hour bulletin 
boards at (703) 759-2072 
and (703) 360-3812. CHUG 
sponsors an annual con- 
ference, houses special- 
interest groups, and pro- 
duces a monthly newsletter. 
CHUG, which is included in 
the annual $12 membership 
fee. Call John Roach in the 
evening at (703) 971-4930 or 
write CHUG. POB 10515 
Alexandria. VA 22310. 

• STANDARDS BBS 

The National Bureau of 
Standards (NBS) Institute of 
Computer Sciences and 
Technology (1CST) has 



established a BBS at (301) 
948-5718. Open to the 
public, its purpose is to ex- 
change information that 
assists federal agencies in 
the efficient selection of 
software and hardware. 
Among topics discussed are 
security and interfacing. For 
details on the project, con- 
tact Ted Landberg at ICST. 
NBS. 22 5 Room #A266. 
Gaithersburg, MD 20899. 
(301) 921-3485. 

• JOIN CP/M EFFORT 

CP/M S1G assists members 
in the technical aspects of 
CP/M and related software 
through monthly meetings, a 
monthly newsletter, and a 
24-hour RCP/M system at 
(303) 465-1313. Article sub- 
missions are welcome, 
public-domain software is 
available, and lectures 
educate members on areas 
of interest. Discounts on 
hardware and software and 
a subscription to the 
newsletter are provided with 
payment of $12 a year. Con- 
tact CP/M SIG Inc., POB 633, 
Broomfield. CO 80020-0633. 

• GERMAN MAC RULES 

At least once every two 
months, members of Club- 
mac (Europe) submit an 
article to the newsletter on 
anything about the Mac or 
their membership is not 
renewed. The result is a 
newsletter that keeps 
members up to date with 
latest developments, reviews 
new programs and hardware, 
and solves members com- 



puting problems. The annual 
membership fee is £2 5 per 
annum. Contact K. Leslie, 
Clubmac, Triererstrasse 8, 
D-55I1 Wincheringen. West 
Germany. 

• BCS GOES REGIONAL 

The Monadnock Region IBM 
PC Users Group, a subgroup 
of the IBM PC Users Group 
of the Boston Computer 
Society (BCS). gathers in 
Keene, New Hampshire, to 
see demonstrations and 
meet with other users. By 
joining, you benefit from a 
software exchange, group- 
purchase discounts, a 
monthly newsletter, and 
automatic BCS membership 
with access to the BCS BBS. 
Contact Susy Thielen, 4 5 
Kelleher St., Keene, NH 
03431. (603) 352-0971. 

• CALL THE AMATEURS 

The bulletin board of the 
New York Amateur Com- 
puter Club (NYACC) is up 
and running. The bimonthly 
newsletter contains NYC 
users group meetings and 
contacts, a NYACC directory, 
events, articles, letters, and 
news. Meeting times and 
locations of several users 
groups are announced on a 
hotline at (212) 864-4595. 
The membership is $15 an- 
nually; students pay $10. 
Write the NYACC. POB 106. 
Church Street Station, New 
York, NY 10008. 

• DOWN UNDER THE 
TRS-80— Members of the 
Sydney TRS-80 Users Group 



CLUBS & NEWSLETTERS is a forum for letting BYTE readers know what 
is happening in the microcomputing community. Emphasis is given to elec- 
tronic bulletin-board services, club-sponsored classes, community-help projects, 
and other activities. We will continue to list new clubs and newsletters. Allow 
at least four months for your club's mention to appear. Send information 
to BYTE, Clubs & Newsletters. POB 372, Hancock. NH 03449. 



(SYDTRUG) share knowledge 
about hardware, software, 
and education, business, 
and related applications for 
TRS-80 computers. Commu- 
nication occurs through the 
monthly newsletter contain- 
ing news and reviews, plus 
lectures, demonstrations, 
and the 24-hour BBS 
(CLUB-80) in Australia on 
(02) 332-2494. The BBS 
features messages, group 
news, and the exchange of 
public-domain software. 
Meetings are held on the 
second and third Saturdays 
of each month in Botany. 
New South Wales. Write 
SYDTRUG. POB 43, Erskine- 
ville 2043. New South Wales, 
Australia, tei: (02) 772-2009. 

• ENGINEERS ANALYZE 
STRUCTURE-The Structural 
Analysis Programs Associa- 
tion (SAPA) upgrades the 
skills of engineers who use 
microcomputers to analyze 
and design buildings. Struc- 
tural software and computer 
services that address this 
issue are discussed in the 
quarterly newsletter, SAPA 
NEWS, and in seminars held 
one full day in eight-month 
intervals. The annual 
membership fee is $100. 
Contact J. Jeff Davies. SAPA, 
Suite D2. 30 Southeast 
Seventh St., Boca Raton. FL 
33432, (305) 392-6597. 

• BBS IN FOX RIVER 

FORMS CLUB-Simplified 
Computer Solutions in 
Wisconsin has helped to 
form the Green Bay/Fox 
River Valley's bulletin-board 
service, SCS ABBS. The SCS 
Users Group evolved from 
the BBS and provides 
members with access to a 
library, group purchasing, 

[continued] 



58 BYTE- APRIL 1985 



PERSONALITY 
PROBLEM? 

UNIX™ and DOS™ At the Same Time! 




Also 
available 
on the 
PC/XT and 
compatibles 






Looking at an IBM PC/AT? Happy with DOS but want 
UNIX? Happy with UNIX but want DOS? Want them 
working together? 

Get The Connector!™ 

The Connector is a revolutionary product that allows 
DOS applications to run on the IBM PC/AT or XT 
under VENIX/86 ( the first licensed AT&T UNIX 
operating system for the IBM PCs) or PC/IX. That 
means you can add one or more terminals to your AT 
which run programs using multi-user VENIX/86 to 
share the disk and printer. Switch between UNIX and 
DOS at the console with a single command. And run 
more than one task simultaneously. Like running a 
spelling check in the background while you print a 
report and run Lotus 1-2-3™ or dBaselF? 

Get yourself an AT and load it with VENIX. Collect 
your DOS and/or UNIX applications. We'll supply The 
Connector. The right solution to your software per- 
sonality problems. 

Call for complete details. 

Unisource Software Corp., Department 4109, 
71 Bent Street, Cambridge, MA 02141 . 
Telex 92-1401/COMPUMART CAM. 

617-491-1264 






UNIX ii. a trademark of AT&T Technologies. Inc IX >S »-. a trademark of Mta as oft, In*. PC' AT and PC/XT are trademarks of IBM, The Connector is a trademark 
of Uniform Software Systems Inc VENIX/86 implementation by VcnturCom, Inc. 1-2-3 and LOTUS are trademarks of Lotus Development Corp dBasell is a 
trademark of AshtonTate. 

Inquiry 392 



Getting UNIX Software 
Down to Business 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 59 



Q 



COMPUTERBANC 



GET SERIOUS. STOP PAYING HIGH PRICES NOW! 

THOUSANDS OF AVAILABLE ITEMS. CALL FOR COMPLETE PRICING. 



SYSTEMS 
IBM PC 

256K, Two 360KB Disk Drives, Color 
Graphics/Monochrome Graphics board, 
Parallel Printer Port, Monochrome Display 
(Amber/Green), DOS 2.1. 
LIST PRICE $2950.00 - ONLY $2095.00 

SUPER XT 10 Meg Upgrade $2795.00 

IBM AT 11 % OFF 

IBM SOFTWARE 

LOTUS 1-2-3 $289.00 

LOTUS Symphony 425.00 

MICROPRO Wordstar 249.00 

ASCII Express For IBM 125.00 

Wordstar Professional 359.00 

Infostar 249.00 

Multimate 269.00 

MICROSOFT Word 229.00 

Word W/Mouse 279.00 

Multiplan 139.00 

Project 159.00 

ASHTON TATE Friday 179.00 

dBASEII 280.00 

dBASE III 349.00 

Framework 359.00 

LIFETREE SOFTWARE Volkswriter . 119.00 

Volkswriter Deluxe 169.00 

FOX & GELLER Quickcode 139.00 

dUtil 59.00 

dGraph 149.00 

MICRORIM Rbase 4000 295.00 

PFS Write 89.00 

File 89.00 

Report 89.00 

Proof 79.00 

Access 79.00 

ENERGRAPHICS 269.00 

IBM HARDWARE 

AST Six Pack Plus 64K 259.00 

MegaPlus II 259.00 

PC Net 1 Starter Kit 830.00 

QUADRAM Quadboard O-K 219.00 

Quadcolor 1 or Microfazer 64K 205.00 

Quadlink 479.00 

MICROSCIENCE 

10MB Winchester 679.00 

FRANKLIN TELECOM 

10 Meg Harddisk 719.00 

22 Meg Harddisk CALL 

Cartridge backup CALL 

HERCULES Mono Graphics 329.00 

Color Card 199.00 

ORCHID Turbo CALL 

PC Net Starter Kit CALL 

PLANTRONICS Colorplus 389.00 

STB Rio plus 64K 249.00 

Super Rio 259.00 

Graphix +II NEW 309.00 

AT Hardware CALL 

TEAC55B 124.00 

55F 180.00 

TANDONTM 100-2 179.00 

IBM Floppy 1.2 Meg CALL 

TALL GRASS 12MB W/Tape 2395.00 

RAM 64K upgrade set 9 35.00 

MOUSE SYSTEMS Optical Mouse. . . . 189.00 
ALSO - XCOMP, PERSYST, ORCHID, 
TITAN AND OTHERS 

PRINTERS 
BROTHER HR-15 369.00 

HR-25 619.00 

HR-35 859.00 

2024LQ 915.00 

JUKI 6100 429.00 



NEC 2030 659.00 

2050 799.00 

3530 1229.00 

3550 1539.00 

STAR MICRONICS Gemini 10X 259.00 

Gemini 15X 389.00 

EPSON RX-80 F/T 329.00 

FX-80 349.00 

FX-100 649.00 

LQ1500 .1299.00 

OKIDATA 92A 389.00 

93A 649.00 

84A 949.00 

PANASONIC 1091 CALL 

TOSHIBA 1350-P 1399.00 

MONITORS 

AMDEX300 129.00 

300A 145.00 

310A 169.00 

Color l+ 269.00 

Color II 459,00 

TAXAN Composite Amber 119.00 

121/122 149.00 

420 (RGB).. 439.00 

415 (RGB) 489.00 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS HX-12 469.00 

SR-12 625.00 

MAX-12 189.00 

ZENITH ZVM-122 Amber 95.00 

ZVM-123 Green 95.00 

NEC 1201 Hi Res Green 115.00 

1205 Hi Res Amber 115.00 

1206 Green 79.00 

JC1215 Composite Color w/audio . . . 215.00 
JC1216 Color RGB 329.00 

MODEMS 

HAYES 1200 469.00 

1200B 389.00 

300 199.00 

Micromodem //e 219.00 

ANCHOR Mark X 109.00 

Mark XII 249.00 

Volksmodem 59.00 

NOVATION Smart Cat Plus CALL 

Access 1-2-3 419.00 

Apple Cat II 239.00 

J-Cat 99.00 

PROMETHEUS Promodem 1200 329.00 

APPLE PRODUCTS 

MICRO SCI A2 drives 179.00 

RANA ELITE 1 219.00 

TEAC drive 189.00 

APPLE Compatible drive 169.00 

WESPER interface 69.00 

BUFFERED 16K 139.00 

SYSTEMS SAVER Fan 69.00 

MICROSOFT Premium //e 279.00 

Softcard CP/M 229.00 

Multiplan... 129.00 

MAC Multiple (Macintosh) 129,00 

Basic (Macintosh) 109.00 

APRICORN Serial Card 69.00 

Z-80 Card 59.00 

ASCII Express Professional 89.00 

DISKETTES S/S 12.00 

D/S 19,00 

KOALA Touch Tablet... 79.00 

HAYES Mach III Joystick 39.00 

THUNDERCLOCK 119.00 

APPLEMOUSEII 129.00 

VIDEX Ultraterm .....179.00 

80 C0LUMN/64K lnterface//e only . . . 99.00 
80 COLUMN Card II + only 59.00 

WE SUPPORT THESE FINE SYSTEMS: 
Apple, Compaq, IBM, and many mora. 



TELEX #550757 /ANSWER BACK - COMPUTERBNK UD 



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Orders Only 
800/332-BANC 



OUTSIDE CALIFORNIA 



COMPUTERBANC 



16783 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach, CA 92647 

714/841-6160 inquiry 89 





jxrod. MHM m*cruJKf«M 
ll|«1 10 I 10*4 Mlw.ino •« 
Lttm ti 00 minimum, i or 




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CLUBS & NEWSLETTERS 



conferencing on the BBS, 
and a monthly newsletter. 
The annua! dues are $10. 
Contact Don Sanderfoot, 
SCS, 2175 Wildwood Dr., 
Little Suamico, WI 54141. 

• BUSINESS BBS 

The Tulane University 
Business Bulletin Board 
(TUBBB) system combines 
business researchers, faculty, 
alumni, and students on line 
to share ideas, data, and 
programs. Contact lohn 
Page, A. B. Freeman School 
of Business, Tulane Univer- 
sity, New Orleans, LA 70118. 

• JOIN LONE STAR 

The Lone Star Computer 
Club of Racine, Wisconsin, a 
group of users of all kinds 
of computers, meets at 7:30 
p.m. on the second Thurs- 
day of each month at the 
Douglas Avenue Park Com- 
munity House. The monthly 
newsletter, President's Newslet- 
ter, combines articles, soft- 
ware reviews, regular 
features, and library and 
system notes with applica- 
tions. Contact H. S, Kanecki, 
Lone Star Computer Club, 
POB 93, Kenosha, WI 53140. 

• VICTOR 9000 IN NW 

The Victor 9000 Users 
Group serves users in 
Oregon and southern 
Washington state by meeting 
regularly to discuss the 
merits of the Victor 9000 
business computer. A 
monthly newsletter, discount 
purchases, software demon- 
strations, and support for 
new users are group 
benefits. Contact Alan 
Bergen, 11765 Southwest 
Ebberts Court, Beaverton, 
OR 97005. 

• KAYPRO IN BALTO 

The Kaypro Users of 
Baltimore (KUB) meet at 
7:30 p.m. on the first and 
third Wednesdays of every 
month at Loch Raven Middle 
School in Baltimore, 
Maryland. The Bear Facts 
Newsletter contains further in- 



formation. The annual fee is 
$12 and requires a blank 
disk as an initial contribu- 
tion. Newsletter subscrip- 
tions are an additional $6. 
Write KUB, POB 23510, 
Baltimore, MD 21203. 

• ZORBA IN U.S. 

The Zorba Equipment Users 
Society (ZEUS), a source of 
information and support for 
Zorba owners nationwide, 
maintains a public-domain 
library. The newsletter, Oracle 
of Zeus, is produced six 
times a year on disk and 
contains up to 30 files of 
relevant information. The 
$2 5 annual membership fee 
covers a subscription to the 
newsletter, Contact Randy 
Brook, ZEUS, POB 1112, 
Athens, OH 45701. 

• EXPLORING THE STARS 

Users of MicroPro's Word- 
Star and InfoStar can sub- 
scribe to two Stargazer 
newsletters, Exploring WordStar 
and Exploring InfoStar. 
Designed to unlock the 
potential of the programs, 
they supply information for 
solving application questions 
and clarifying documenta- 
tion through a practical, 
hands-on approach. 
Members are encouraged to 
submit articles and can 
benefit from group-purchase 
discounts. Subscriptions are 
$24 annually per newsletter 
or $40 for both. Contact 
HI-Tech, Department B, 4 
Harwood Dr., Glen Cove, NY 
11542. 

• MAC GETS TECHNICAL 

A Macintosh Programming 
journal, MacTech, reviews soft- 
ware development and pro- 
gramming exclusively for the 
Mac Each month articles 
written by a panel will build 
on previous columns, en- 
hancing readers' understand- 
ing of how to best apply 
Macintosh software tech- 
nology. The subscription 
rate is $24 a year. Contact 
MacTech, POB 846, Placentia, 
CA 92670, (714) 993-9939. ■ 



THE SIMPLE APPROACH 
IS THE SYMBOL APPROACH 



10S=0 1 


V REAL X( 100) 1 


i 


20F0RI=1 TO 100 1 


i READ* N.ttCDJ- 1 ,N) 1 


[ 


30 INPUT X 1 


5=0 




40 IF X = GOTO 70 1 


DO 1 1= 1 ,N 


(«7X)*pX«-0 


50 S=S+X 1 


I 10 S-S+XCD 




60 NEXT I j 


1 PRINT * S/N I 


I 


70 PRINT 5/(1-1) 1 


1 END 1 


L 


BASIC 

program to calculate averages. . . 


FORTRAN 

just shrunk from seven lines. . . 


POCKET APL 

to one. 



INTRODUCING POCKET AFC! 

Pocket APL, a new PLUS* WARE™ product, 
symbolizes a whole new way to solve problems. 
Faster than Fortran. Simpler than Basic. And at a 
cost much less than Cobol and many other pro- 
gramming languages. Its use of symbols makes it 
concise and efficient— powerful and productive. 

WORKING IN SHORTHAND = 
WORKING FASTER, SMARTER. 

Pocket APL allows you to shrink 
the length of your programs. Because 
just a few symbols say what takes lines 
and lines to say in other programming 
languages. So Pocket APL cuts the 
drudgery and need for tedious sub- 
routines and long lists of commands. 

GET FLEXIBILITY > 
WITH CANNED SOFTWARE. 

Pocket APL is a complete APL 
implementation with enhancements 
like online HELP, windowing, report 
formatting, dual file system, and 
debugging aids. It's also a powerful 
online calculator. So you don't have 



BBSS 54 * 




to switch back and forth between programs or from 
your hand-held calculator to the computer. 

And the symbols? Simple. You'll learn them fast. 
They'll become as second nature to you as + , - , 
x , and ■«-. Once you start using them, you'll be 
programming four to 10 times faster than with 
conventional languages. And as your needs grow, 
you can easily upgrade to STSC's APL*PLUS®/PC 
System for even more features— like 
communications and graphics. 

POCKET APL COSTS 
MUCH < YOU'D EXPECT. 

Pocket APL makes programming 
easy. And priced at just $95, it's easy 
on the budget, too. It works with IBM 
PC's and compatibles and requires 
only 128K. So if problem-solving is 
taking up too much of your time, the 
answer is symbol. Pocket APL. 

To order, or for more information, 
call 800-592-0050. In Maryland, call 
(301) 984-5123. 

Or write STSC, Inc., 2115 East 
Jefferson St., Rockville, MD 20852. 
All major credit cards accepted. 



Problem-solving at the speed of thought. 



^V^JI Pocket APL uses a soft character set for computers with IBM-compatible graphics board or color monitor; keywords for computers with monochrome. Optional 
^P | ^P^M charactGr generating ROM can be ordered for IBM PC monochromes or Hercules monochrome boards 

AContei Company PLUS* WARE and Pocket APL are trademarks of STSC, Inc. APL* PLUS is a service mark and trademark of STSC, Inc., registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark 
Office and in other countries. 

Inquiry 416 APRIL 1985 • B Y T E 61 



THE MAINFRAME 



When one of twenty Micro Mart 
Sales Pros answers a call, he's ready 
at his PC. 



Micro Mart's Ten Million Dollar 
Inventory is on-line with our IBM 
Mainframe, so answers are fast 
and accurate. 



With PC to Mainframe Inven- 
tory, this Micro Mart Salesman 
verifies his stock, quotes his best 
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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 63 



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BOOK REVIEWS 



BUILD YOUR OWN 
EXPERT SYSTEM 
Chris Naylor 
John Wiley & Sons 
New York: 1985 
246 pages, $13.95 

ARTIFICIAL 

INTELLIGENCE IN BASIC 
Mike James 
Focal Press 

Stoneham, MA: 1984 
122 pages, $14.95 

THE COGNITIVE 
COMPUTER; ON 
LANGUAGE, LEARNING, 
AND ARTIFICIAL 
INTELLIGENCE 
Roger C Schank 
with Peter G. Childers 
Addison-Wesley 
Reading, MA: 1984 
282 pages, $17.95 



BUILD YOUR OWN 
EXPERT SYSTEM 
Reviewed by 
Ramachandran 
Bharath 




An increasing number of comprehensive introductions 
to expert systems— computer programs that emulate 
the decision making of human experts— have been pub- 
lished recently. Tro examples are Building Expert Systems by 
Frederick Hayes-Roth (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 
1983), and A Practical Guide to Designing Expert Systems by 
Sholom M. Weiss and Casimir A. Kulikowski (Totowa, NJ: 
Rowman and Allanheld, 1984). 

But the object of Chris Naylor's book, Build Your Own Ex- 
pert System (originally published in the United Kingdom in 
1983), is to help home computer users write expert sys- 
tems that learn. 

John F Sowa, author of Conceptual Structures: Information 
Processing in Mind and Machine (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 
1983), groups expert systems into three categories based 
on the kinds of problems they address: classification (such 



as diagnosis of disease), de- 
sign (of chips, for example), 
and decision support. 
Naylor's book is aimed 
essentially at teaching 
readers about classification 
problems. 

Naylor begins with a 
good discussion of the 
general advantages and 
limitations of current expert 
systems. He follows this 
with a chapter on statistical 
and probability theories; he 
provides the essentials of 
elementary probability 
theory and discusses revis- 
ing initial estimates of prob- 
abilities in light of relevant 
additional information. (The 
technique for such revision 
of initial estimates is known 
as Bayes' theorem.) Naylor 
introduces these concepts 
extremely well by relating 
them to an expert system 
the reader might want to 
build: a program for fore- 
casting weather using infor- 
mation on current condi- 
tions of fog, humidity, tem- 
perature, etc. 

After providing this background, the author leads the 
reader through the process of developing a general BASIC 
program that can solve a broad range of classification 
problems. The process includes a BASIC program that asks 
the user questions regarding the variables relevant to the 
problem and the outcomes possible in the problem. The 
program then must be given examples of the different out- 
comes and of the values of the associated variables. The 
program can handle any problem that has these charac- 
teristics; a set of variables relevant to the problem; dif- 
ferent outcomes distinguished by a different pattern of 
values for the variables; and the pattern of values of the 
variables indicates which outcome would result. 

A concrete example of this abstract definition is medical 
diagnosis. Here, the pattern (symptoms) tells the doctor 

[continued) 



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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 65 



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BOOK REVIEWS 



which outcome (disease) is indicated. The pattern is rep- 
resented by a set of variables: a 1 in a particular variable 
means the symptom that variable represents is present; 
a stored means it is not. Another example is a fault- 
diagnosis problem to test Naylor's expert program. In this 
problem, the possible variables are the faults you might 
observe in a cassette recorder: no lights; tape won't move; 
unit won't record; intermittent sound; distorted sound; er- 
ratic speed; and hum. Depending on which subset of these 
seven variables is operative, you can determine which out- 
come (or fault) you should diagnose, such as the switch 
is off, the tape jammed, the tape was inserted wrongly, 
the head is dirty, or there's a problem with the amplifier. 
(An optional extension of this is incorporated in a listing.) 
Using the diagnosis as the input, the extension offers as 
output a suggested remedial action— clean the head, 
switch on the recorder, etc— that is, it is a two-node (or 
two-stage) classification problem. 

The second stage classifies the faults to produce 
remedial action. Readers can come up with their own ex- 
amples of situations that fit this general classification-prob- 
lem format. By finding a suitable problem that relates dif- 
ferent subsets of a set of variables to different outcomes, 
the general program can be used for diagnosis. 

In the course of developing this general program, Naylor 
introduces the theoretical concepts underlying the general 
classification problem, referred to in texts on statistical 
theory as multiple discriminant analysis (the problem of 
discriminating or distinguishing between different out- 
comes on the basis of information regarding the dis- 
criminating variables). By the time readers work through 
the explanations of each line of the program and what 
it does, they will have learned useful statistical theory 
related to a problem that holds their interest. 

The author explains the fundamental basis of all diag- 
nostic or classification-type expert systems. He illustrates 
how they are essentially a set of IF (set of symptoms) 
THEN (corresponding outcome or diagnosis) statements. 
These are usually referred to as "production rules." He 
discusses major successful expert systems, like MYCIN, 
for medical diagnosis; Prospector, for geological prospect- 
ing; and DENDRAL, for chemical analysis. The book is 
worth reading just for this lucid explanation of the basis 
of current systems and for the discussion of making a pro- 
gram so specific to a particular problem area that it can- 
not be easily adapted to a different problem area. In con- 
trast, the programs Naylor teaches readers to build are 
of the learning type; that is, on the basis of examples of 
different types of problems, they can learn to diagnose 
problems in different areas. He points out that the disad- 
vantage of this is that such a general program would not 
be as efficient as one built for a specific purpose. 

Summary 

I highly recommend this book for several reasons. It pro- 
vides a simple yet insightful discussion of extant successful 

[continued] 



66 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



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BOOK REVIEWS 



expert systems. It teaches the basic principles of statistical 
theory, production rules, learning algorithms, and so forth 
in a practical way and provides a technical summary at 
the end of the book for reference. The book contains a 
program for an expert system that is based on an applica- 
tion of Bayes' theorem. 

Running the program in chapter 7 helped immensely in 
following Naylor's explanations. Also, verifying that the 
sample program produced the results indicated by the 
author confirmed that 1 was on the right track. The pro- 
grams are given in Apple 11 and Spectrum versions of 
BASIC. The reader with access to a different system (I had 
to modify the learning program for the IBM Personal Com- 
puter) becomes painfully aware of the difficulty of under- 
standing the logic of another person's BASIC program 
when it is written in a version that uses only single-letter 
names for variables. Naylor mentions the unsuitability of 
BASIC for these types of programs; his choice was based 
on the fact that it is the language most commonly available 
for home computers. Now that microcomputer versions 
of a more suitable language, Prolog, are becoming avail- 
able, I hope Naylor's next edition of the book will pro- 
vide micro-PROLOG listings as well. 

Ramachandran Bkarath is a professor in the Department of Manage- 
ment, Marketing, and Data Processing at Northern Michigan Univer- 
sity [Marquette. Ml 49855|. 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN BASIC 
Reviewed by Norman I. Chaplin 

The artificial intelligence (AI) invasion that was once 
predicted has now arrived. In fact, this intelligence has 
established itself in the areas of intelligent games, deci- 
sion analysis, and expert systems, in addition to programs 
that correct spelling and grammar. 

Mike lames, the author of Artificial Intelligence in BASIC, 
believes the best way to comprehend the scope of Al is 
to gain experience in it. He recommends using BASIC, 
which is both widely understood and easily read. 

To illustrate different techniques, lames uses a few sim- 
ple problems that are repeated in various branches of AI. 
He provides practical programs that can be entered with- 
out prohibitive effort from a keyboard. His BASIC dialect 
is a standard Microsoft version without special features; 
it can be adapted readily to most home computers. 

lames uses a heuristic attack on the familiar nine-square 
problem (arrange 8 numbered tiles in numerical order 
within a 3 by 3 array). He defines a heuristic rule as one 
that, when applied, tends to make the result move closer 
to the solution. With a heuristic, as opposed to an 
algorithm, there is no guarantee that a solution will be 
found, The path of the heuristic may be diverted into a 
closed loop of repeating positions. The program prints 
the board position to the screen every two to four moves 
and prints out the total number of moves taken to reach 



68 B Y 



APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 67 



BOOK REVIEWS 



a solution. Although many of my attempts ended in con- 
tinual cycling through a particular sequence of moves, ! 
generally solved the problem in twenty to sixty moves, 
and sometimes in as few as seven or eight. 

Man and Machine 

The opening chapter discusses 'Tour Computer's IG," 
"Computer-Aided Intelligence," and "What Is Intelligence?" 
In the sections on pattern recognition and speech pro- 
duction and recognition, lames admits that these subjects 
are too much for BASIC and are best handled with dedi- 
cated hardware. A discussion of grammar leads to an ex- 
ample of English generated by a computer. 'Thinking, Rea- 
soning, and Problem Solving" deals with mathematical 
theorem proving, cybernetics, and human associative 
memory. 

Man teaches machine in chapters 4, 5, and 6. Man in- 
structs the program Aardvark to recognize animals. To ac- 
complish this, Aardvark asks a series of questions to build 
up its inventory of identifiable animals until it becomes 
an expert in animal identification. Aardvark is rudimen- 
tary, but with some expansion it could become a prac- 
tical program, useful in fields such as mineral identifica- 
tion. I used it for bird identification. 

"Structure of Memory" discusses the problem of mem- 
ory-recall and explains computer solutions such as rela- 
tional stores and conceptual databases, lames fully il- 
lustrates the conceptual database problem with the Tom 
the Cat program, which solves the recall problem using 
a number of corresponding matrices. If you enter TOM 
IS A CAT CAT HAS FUR: and then inquire, Does Tom have 
fur? the program answers YES. (Tom wouldn't run until 
1 eliminated its bugs.) 

Language and Philosophy 

Another chapter deals with language: syntax, parsing, and 
semantics. Several pages cover Eliza, the psychotherapy 
program. There is also a listing and description of a BASIC 
program, Chat, that generates English sentences. 

The last chapter is about philosophy. Can a computer 
program be intelligent? Or merely very clever? What about 
awareness? Should the Turing test be modified to measure 
artificial intelligence? The theme of this book could be 
summarized in James's words: "There is nothing very dif- 
ferent about intelligent programs and they can be under- 
stood without any difficult theory." Neurophysiology shows 
us how small groups of neurons work, functions that we 
can duplicate electronically. Psychology, however, is so 
genera] that it can provide little practical guidance. James 
emphasizes that the third-generation software beginning 
to appear is characterized by the assumption that any mis- 
understandings are the program's fault, and the program 
will attempt to correct its mistake by learning the mean- 
ing of the new input from the user. This could be inter- 
preted as intelligent behavior. I loaded a Commodore 64 
with the Chat program, made a few changes, and found 

{continued} 



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BOOK REVIEWS 



the answers from such a short program to be thought-pro- 
voking. The program generates ideas, which is a form of 
creativity. But is it creativity from the machine that ar- 
ranges the word symbols, or from the man who interprets 
those symbols 9 Or both 9 Is this machine-aided creation? 
The sentences generated by Chat are enigmatic, but that 
could be changed by programming some restrictions on 
word association. The meaningless sentences would be 
reduced by this and further suppressed by a supervisory 
censor. We could even program it to learn from human 
prose. But would we then be restricting creativity? 

If you are already competent in AI, Artificial \ntelligence 
in BASIC is not for you unless you would like to instruct 
others. It could be a useful text for a short laboratory 
course in which the existing programs could be extended 
as exercises, or it could serve as a practical supplement 
to more theoretical material. It is superb as an introductory 
text for study at home. The programs are short enough 
that you could enter most in less than half an hour. 

The knowledge attained from these short BASIC pro- 
grams is readily transportable to other, more efficient 
languages, where it can become a tool for construction 
of large, more practical Al programs. 

Norman I, Chaplin (3155 South Dr., Mlentown, PA 18103) is a 

retired designer in VLSI now actina as a writer and consultant. 



THE COGNITIVE COMPUTER 
Reviewed by Darrow Kirkpatrick 



Roger Schank, director of Yale University's Artificial In- 
telligence Project, has succeeded in writing a clear, 
exciting report on the nature of human intelligence and 
the implications of machine intelligence. Explaining his 
research, Schank tells us how much we must know about 
computers, what we can learn about intelligence from the 
development of understanding computers, and how intel- 
ligent computers will affect our world. 

Setting the Record Straight 

Schank risks distilling his 20 years of research into one 
nontechnical book about artificial intelligence. This is his 
attempt to set the record straight. Along the way we can 
learn a little about how computers work and a great deal 
about how human beings think, learn, and understand. 
Schank thinks learning about AI research is more impor- 
tant for an understanding of computers than learning to 
program in BASIC (or any of the other computer-literacy 
skills in vogue). Al research has the potential to transform 
our lives through the creation of new machines that can 
do things never done before. 

Cognitive Understanding 

If we want to build understanding computers, first we must 
understand ourselves; we must be familiar with human 

{continued) 



70 



BYTE • APRIL I985 



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BOOK REVIEWS 



thought processes before we can program an understand- 
ing computer. Schank defines three levels of understand- 
ing: making sense, cognitive understanding, and complete 
empathy. Current AI research is concerned mostly with 
cognitive understanding. Cognitive computers will be able 
to learn, relate the present to the past, formulate new in- 
formation, and explain themselves. 

People understand in terms of their own experiences. 
We can understand only if our memories are able to 
change to match a situation. In a sense, we are pro- 
grammed by our experiences. But intelligent entities can, 
at best, "make sense" of experiences they haven't had. 
Computers will never understand us at the level of com- 
plete empathy because they are not like us. 

Intelligence is the ability to react to something new in 
a nonprogrammed way. The fundamental difference be- 
tween imitation and understanding in a system is self- 
knowledge. An intelligent system must be able to explain 
itself. 

Because AI research is a new and different science, every 
major AI project is in some sense a failure at modeling 
human intelligence. Each success shows only what is miss- 
ing. AI is a steady but plodding study of the impossible. 
As it asks questions about language, reading, and under- 
standing, it can lead us to appreciate human qualities and 
abilities even more. 

AI research has an uneasy relationship with computer 
science. Computer scientists are searching for ways to 
make computer hardware and software work more effi- 
ciently, but AI researchers are attempting to raise the level 
of understanding of computers. Ultimately, Schank feels, 
AI will be assimilated into other disciplines. 

Schank defines product-directed AI as concerning the 
technology of getting computers to do intelligent things, 
and theory-directed AI as concerning the representation 
of knowledge, learning, and human thought processes. Ex- 
pert systems are examples of product-directed AI. 

Language and Knowledge Structures 

Until recently, the representation of abstract ideas and 
concrete events has been possible only with natural lan- 
guages. Computers also must be able to handle abstract 
concepts, but a system will not seem very intelligent with- 
out also having a clear grasp of the obvious. In a 
humorous progression of examples of conceptual errors 
in the development of an early AI program. Schank dem- 
onstrates just how obscure the obvious can be. 

Our memories are tuned to ideas, not words. A major 
task in AI programs is making the computer forget the 
words and retain their meanings. An understanding system 
must rely on very basic conceptual representations of 
events. The Yale Artificial Intelligence Project utilizes 
only 1 1 primitive actions to represent real-world 
happenings. 

An interesting thing about human knowledge is not how 
much we know, it's how effortlessly we recall what we 
know. One of the basic methods used to represent knowl- 



edge in AI programs is the "script." Scripts enable com- 
puters to deal with everyday, stereotypical situations by 
using a group of connected possibilities, or "slots," and 
rules for filling these slots. 

But if computers are to understand more than stereo- 
typical situations, they must have some knowledge of why 
and how people do what they do. Computers must have 
knowledge structures for goals and plans. 

Early AI research concentrated on the outer form of lan- 
guage by building parsers to dissect language into its 
grammatical elements. Current research is occupied with 
understanding the content of communication. For Schank 
and others, language is a vehicle rather than an end; the 
aim is to write programs that concentrate on meaning 
rather than on grammatical structure. 

In the early 1970s Schank and his students built soft- 
ware programs called the Inferencer and the Paraphraser. 
In order to process sentences and make conclusions, the 
Inferencer could parse draw inferences, and generate nat- 
ural language. The Paraphraser could understand a sen- 
tence well enough to restate it in different ways, from dif- 
ferent perspectives. However, to understand large pieces 
of text, computers must draw inferences from many con- 
nected sentences. 

A computer can use scripts to make up for the lack of 
logical connections between events, but researchers have 
to give the computer methods for dealing with the world 
when it does not have a script. More sophisticated AI pro- 
grams use beliefs, inferences, plans, goals, scripts, and 
prior memories in order to understand. Researchers have 
seen the importance of a dynamic, flexible memory that 
changes every time it understands something. 

In the long term, it is unrealistic for us to expect to build 
perfectly general knowledge structures into computers. In- 
stead we must give them the ability to learn. This is the 
only way computers will be able to make connections 
across different fields of knowledge— thereby solving what 
Schank calls the "domain problem." Computers will have 
to know what they don't know as well as what they do 
know. 

AI in Education 

I suspect that first among Roger Schank's priorities is 
teaching. He has strong opinions about education. The 
issue is not how much we must learn about computers but 
what we can learn from them. 

Schank thinks children should first learn to read and 
write. Public schools and teachers are not equipped to 
train children for programming careers. Schank concludes 
that children are better off with no programming skills 
rather than poorly taught computer skills. 

Schank thinks that children must learn at an active, in- 
dividualized pace. Children must actually learn, not just 
repeat, new principles. Experimentation with computers 
can provide this kind of learning. 

For Schank, education is the most important and poten- 

[cont'mued) 



74 BYTE- APRIL 198^ 



Where Giants Fear To Tread 




For five years NESTAR has ventured where giants have feared to 
tread-local area networking. In fact NESTAR has installed more 
large local area networks in large institutions than any other 
manufacturer 

Soon the giants will be involved in networking and that will 
ensure broad industry support. NESTAR's products will be totally 
compatible and complementary to the systems 
sold by the giants. That way you receive the 
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Call or write for your copy of: 
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Inquiry 282 



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745158 16 
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74C165 16 1 29 
74C173 16 89 
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74C175 16 1.19 
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74C193 16 1 39 
74C195 16 129 
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74C903 14 
74C906 14 
74C907 14 
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LF356N S 109 
LM358N 1 59 
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LM373N 14 4 95 
LM3/7N 14 1 95 
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LM3B4N! 14 195 
LM1RON il a 89 
LM387N B 1 39 
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LMaStN-aOM 1.19 
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LM393N B 45 
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LM399M 595 
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NE544N 14 1 95 
NE550A 14 1 95 
NE555V 8 35 
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LM556N 14 .79 
NE558N IE 159 
ME564N 16 1 95 
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NE571N 16 2.49 
NE592N 14 1 19 
LM703CN B 1 49 
LM710N 14 69 
LM711N 14 79 
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LM733N 14 89 
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LM748N 1 
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LM1800N 16 
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LM1889N 18 
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C04042 16 
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C04044 16 

16 89 
CD4047 14 89 
CD4048 16 59 
CD4049 16 39 
CD4050 16 39 
C04051 16 
(,114052 16 89 
CO4053 16 79 
CD4056 16 

24 1.95 
C04060 16 89 
CJOtWb 14 45 
CD4068 14 39 
CO4069 14 35 
CD407O 14 29 
CO4071 14 29 
OM072 14 29 
CO4073 14 ?9 
CO4077 14 .15 
C04078 14 4 ■ 
CD4081 14 29 
CD4093 14 49 
CD4QS4 IE 195 
C0409B IE 1 95 
CD4099 IE 1 89 


CD4503 

CO4508 
CO4510 
CW5I1 
C04512 
C045I4 
C04515 
C04516 
C04516 
CD4519 
CD4520 
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CD4528 
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MR* 

6 am LP 

14 pin LP 
lb pin LP 

15 (wi LP 

20 pm I P 

2? pm LP 
24 .mi LI 
28 pin LP 


■ ...... JkUUmWUt 

m m 

SoiderUi) (Gold) Standart 
)e (Tin( Sockets ,*,„ , 9 IM9 m . n 


Wire Unp ^j 
Sockets ^ m 
(Gold) Lew) =3 

Pin Ha 1-9 16-99 100* 


Header Plu§s (Gold) 


fp.nWvV 55 49 45 
Uip-nWW 69 65 59 

■ i . - mm 75 69 

16 pin WW 79 72 65 
'- .in- WW 95 65 75 
!0pmWW1.19 1.09 95 

,',' ..III WW 1 2:1 1 1-1 111', 

24 inn WW 1 35 1 19 1 08 
28 pin WW 169 1.55 i 19 
id urn WW1 89 t.79 IBS 
40pinWW229 195 179 


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II 14 I"' | I4p 

17 i- 14 | 16 pm 

19 17 16 IHjJWSG 65 59 51 

26 24 23 2D pm SG 75 85 59 

30 27 2b 22 pm SG 79 6 
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PwlHo 1 9 IU99 ll»«i 




; HI 65 59 55 

24 pm HP i 15 .99 89 


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S10 Minimum Order - US Funds Only CA Residents Add 6^% Sales Tax Spec Sheets - 30e each 

Shipping Add 5 " - plus S1 50 Insurance Send $1 Postage fof FREE 1985 Jameco Catalog Prices Subject to Change 

Send stamped, seif-addnsssed envelope to receive a Monthly Sales Flyer - FREE' 




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sterCard 






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- Telex: 1 76043 




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HONE ORDERS 


WELCOME - 


- (415) 592-8 


30003 


1 982 Nat. Linear Data Book 1 1957 pgs i . $1 1 .95y 


/ 



76 B V T E 



APRIL !W 



Commodore Accessories ProModem 1200 and Options Apple" Accessories 



RS232 ADAPTER FOR 
VIC-20 AND COMMODORE 64 




*"*, 



c e 



The JE232CM allows connection of standard serial RS232 
printers, modems, etc. to your VIC-20 and C-64. A 4-pole 
switch allows the inversion of the 4 control lines. Com- 
plete installation and operation instructions included. 

■ Plugs into User Port • Provides Standard RS232 signal 
levels • Uses 6 signals (Transmit, Receive. Clear to Send. 
Request to Send. Data Terminal Ready. Data Set Ready). 

JE232CM $39.95 



VOICE SYNTHESIZER 
FOR APPLE AND COMMODORE 



JE520CM 




JE520AP 



• Over 250 word vocabulary -affixes allow the formation of more 
than 500 words • Built-in amplifier, speaker, volume control, and 
audio jack ■ Recreates a clear, natural male voice • Plug-in user 
ready with documentation and sample software • Case size: 
7'A"L x 3VTW x 1-3/8"H 



APPLICATIONS: 

Part No, C 

JE52QCM 

JE520AP 



• Security Warning 

• Teaching 

• Instrumentation 



• Telecommunication 

• Handicap Aid 

• Games 



For Commodore 64 & VIC-20 $114.95 

For Apple II. ll+anrU/e $149.95 



Computer Memory 
Expansion Kits 



IBM PC, PC XT and Compatibles 

Most of the popular Memory Boards leg Quadram " Expansion Boards) 
allow you to add an additional 64K. 128K. 192Kor256K The IBM64K Kit will 

; j ";'Ui-iti- 1 ■ begird . m 64K byte iments IT* Kll i i simple to Install 

lust insert the 9 ■ 64K RAM chips in the provided sockets and set Ihe 2 groups 
of switches Complete conversion documentation included 



IBM64K (Nine 200ns 64K RAMs) $33.49 

IBM PC AT 

Each kit comes complvlc with nine ' ?8K dynamic RAMs and dot' umenlation 
tor cohesion 

IBM128K (Nine 250ns 128K RAMs) $199.95 

APPLE He 



JE864 $99.95 

TRS-80 MODEL I, III 

Each Kit comes complete with eight MM529G (UPD4 1 6/4 11 6> 1 6K Dynamic 
RAMs and documentation for conversion Model I 16K equipped with Ex- 
pansion Interfaci' ran >.» . ,| u oil I.. l,-,h with .' Kits Model III ( ,in he 
expanded from I6K lo 48K using 2 Kits Each Kit will expand computer by 
16K increments 

TRS-16K3 200ns (Model III) $6.29 

TRS-16K4 250ns (Model 1) $5.49 

TRS-80 MODEL IV & 4P 

Easy to install Kit comes complete with 8 ea 4 1 64N-20 (200ns) 64K Dynamic 
RAMs and conversion documentation Converts TRS-80 Model IV computers 
Irom 16K lo 64K Also expands Model 4P trom 64K to 128K 

TRS-64K-2 $29.95 

[Converts the Model IV from 1 6K to 64K or will expand the Model 4P from 
64Kto 128K) 

TRS-64K2PAL (Model IV only) $49.95 

(8 - 4164s with PAL Chip to expand from 64K to 128K) 

TRS-80 COLOR AND COLOR II 

Easy to install Kit comes complete with 8 each 4164N-20 (200ns) 64K 
Dynamic RAMs and documentation lor conversion Converts TRS-80 Color 
Computers with D. E. ET, F and NC circuit boards to 32K Also converts 
TRS-80 Coloi Computer II to b4K Fie* DOS or OS " required ],;, utilize 
lull 64K HAM on all computers. 

TRS-64K-2 $29.95 




4jSLs^5d£-i^5 



PROTECT YOURSELF... 

DATASHIELD 
Surge Protector 

Uiminales voll.tiju ';pik.---,.iti<i E MI-RFI noise hetor 
can damage your equipment or cause data lOH 6-S 
warranty Power dissipati 
2.000.000 watts 



PART NO 


DESCRIPTION 


PRICE 


MODEL 75 


4 Sockets, On/Off Switch 


. $49.95 


MODEL 85 
MODEL 100 
MODEL 110AMS 


6 Sock , Super Filters. On/Oft Switch. . 
6 Sock . Super Filters. Low Volt Alarm. 
6 Sockets. Super Filters, 
Auto Master Switch 


S59.95 
. $69.95 

$99.95 






DATASHIELD 
Back-Up Power Source 

Protect your computer trom black-outs. Brown out- power 
surges and line noise PTI's PC200 is ilesionrd tor PCs 

wilh floppy disk ni.< r, the «: : (0i: Iki hard i!r> in,-m,-,r v 

and iho AT800 lot mulli user systems A typical compatible 




PC200 (200 Watt Rating) 

XT300 (300 Watt Rating). 

AT500 (500 Watt Rating*. 

AT800 (800 Watt Rating) 



S299.95 
$399.95 
S699.95 
$799.95 



j£ Intelligent 300/1 200 Baud 
Prometheus Telephone Modem with 
Real Time Clock/Calendar 

The ProModem'" is a Bell 21 2A (300/1 200 baud) intelli- 
gent stand-alone modem ■ Full featured expandable 
modem • Standard features include Auto Answer and 
Auto Dial, Help Commands, Programmable Intelligent 
Dialing, Touch Tone"" and Pulse Dialing & More • Hayes 
command set compatible plus an additional extended 
command set- Shown w/ alphanumeric display option. 
Part No . Description price 

PM1 200 RS-232 Stand Alone Unit $349.95 

PM1200A Apple II, II+ and lie Internal Unit $369.95 

PM1200B IBM PC and Compatible Internal Unit $269.95 

PM1200BS IBM PC & Comp. Int. Unit w/ProCom Software $319.95 

MAC PAC Macintosh Package $399.95 

{Includes PM1200, Cable, & ProCom Software) 

OPTIONS FOR ProModem 1200 

PM-COM (ProCom Communication Software) $79.95 

Please specify Operating System. 

PM-OP (Options Processor) $79.95 

PMO-16K (Options Processor Memory - 16K). $10.95 

PMO-32K (Options Processor Memory - 32K) $20.95 

PMO-64K (Options Processor Memory - 64K) $39.95 

PM-ALP (Alphanumeric Display). $79.95 

PM-Special (Includes Options Processor, 64K Memory 

and Alphanumeric Display) S 189.95 



KEYBOARDS 





mm* 



13VLx4VWx VH 



New! 





SPECIAL 
FUNCTIONS! 

Description 



Mitsumi 54-Key Un en coded 
All-Pur pose Keyboard 

• SPST keyswitches • 20 pin ribbon cable connec- 
tion • Low profile keys ■ Features: cursor controls, 
control, caps (lock), function, enter and shift keys 

• Color (keycaps): grey • Wt.: 1 lb. * Pinout included 

KB54 $14.95 



5V4" APPLE™ 

Direct Plug-In 

Compatible Disk Drive 

and Controller Card 

The ADD-514 Disk Drive uses 
Shugart SA390 mechanics- 143K 
formatted storage • 35 tracks 
• Compatible with Apple Control- 
ler & ACC-1 Controller • The drive 
comes complete with connector and cable - just plug 
into your disk controller card ■ Size: 6"L x 3VW x 
8-9/1 6"D • Weight: 44 lbs. 

ADD-514 (Disk Drive) $169.95 

ACC-1 (Controller Card) $ 49.95 

More Apple Compatible Add-Ons... 

APF-1 ICooling Fan with surge protection). . . . $39.95 

KHP4007 (Switching Power Supply) $59.95 

JE614 (Numeric/Aux. Keypad for lie) $59.95 

KB-A68 (Keyboard w/Keypad for II & IN ) $79.95 

MON-12G 02" Green Monitor w/swivel stand). . . . $99.95 

JE864 (80 Col -64K RAM for He I $99.95 

ADD-12 (5V Half-Height Disk Drive). $179.95 

.^kAi^ 

JPfflL ADDITIONAL APPLE 
"lijjpT ADD-ONS AVAILABLE 

ARC-1 6K(16K RAM Card for Apple II fill + ) $39.95 

AEB-2 IEPROM Burner for Apple II. II • & He) . .$69.95 

Allows copy of standard EPROMS 

2708.2716. 2732, 2764 
ASSC-P (Super Serial Card for Apple II. II + & lie) . .$99.95 
ADD-IIC (5V Half-Ht Disk Drive for Apple lie) $189.95 



DISK DRIVES 



82-Key ASCII Cherry Keyboard 

■ 7-bit parallel ASCII ■ 1 1-key numeric keypad 

■ Cursor keypad ■ SPST mechanical keyswitches 
- 4 illuminated keys * 26-pin header connector 
Color white -Size 18"L x 6VW x 1 VH -Spec 

I n i Ilk1i.h1 



KB8201. 



. (1700 avail.}. . . . $29.95 



Apple Keyboard and Case 
for Apple II and II+ 

Keyboard * 68 keys • 15-key keypad ■ Direct con- 
neclion with 16-pin ribbon connector • 26 special 
functions • Size 14VL x 5VW x 1 VH 

Case: Accommodates KB- A68 • Pop- up lid tor easy 
access ■ Fits power supply and motherboard too 
• Size 15VW x 1S"D x 4VH Price 




Documentation % 1 8 U ^. 

Included ^^ ys/ 

MPI51S (MR 5U " SS full-ht.) $ 89.95 

RFD480 (Remex 5% " DS full-ht.) $109.95 

TM100-2 (Tandon 5V DS full-ht.) $159.95 

FD55B (Teac 5' 4 " DS half-ht.) $149.95 

SA455 (Shugart 5 V DS half-ht). ... $1 59.95 

FDD100-8 (Siemens 8" SS full-ht.) $119.95 

PCK-5 (5V Power Cable Kit) $2.95 

PCK-8 (8" Power Cable Kit) $3.95 



UV-EPROM Eraser 



KB-EA1 Apple Keyboard and Case (pictured above). .... $134.95 

KB-A68 68-Key Apple Keyboard only $ 79.95 

EAEC-1 Expanded Apple Enclosure Case only. .....$ 59.95 



POWER SUPPLIES 



Power/Mate Corp. REGULATED POWER SUPPLY 

•Input: 1O5-125/210-25OVACat47-63Hz ■ Line regulation 0.05% -Three 
mounting surfaces ■ Overvoltage protection ■ UL recognized ■ CSA certified 
Part No. Output Size Weight Price 



8 Chips - 21 Minutes 




1 Chip- 15 Minutes | 





*©i 




W 



EMAS/6B 
EMA5/6C 



5V'« ; 3A/6V<a2.5A 
5Vi.n<6A/6V!S'5A 



4V'Lx4"Wx2VH 
5VLx 4VWx2V'H 



2 lbs 



$29.95 
$39.95 



■ r. i ',.■.,: i: i PROM . m : ,..", 1 1 1 in ri chips within 2 1 minutes (1 chip 
in 1 5 minutes) Maintains constant exposure distance o) one inch 
Special conductive foam liner eliminates static build-up Built-in 
safety lock to prevent UV exposure. Compact - only 9 00"L x 
3.70"W x 2 60"H Complete with holding tray tor 8 chips 

DE-4 UV-EPROM Eraser. ..... $74.95 

UVS-11EL Replacement Bulb $16.95 



JE664 EPROM PROGRAMMER 



KEPCO/TDK 4-OUTPUT SWITCHING POWER SUPPLY 

• Ideal for disk drive needs of CRT terminals, microcomputers and 
video games • Input 1 1 5/230VAC, 50/60HZ • Output t-5V©5 Amp, (■ 1 2V § 
1.8 Amp. • 12V «d 2 Amp, -12V <o> 0.5 Amp • UL recognized • CSA certified 
•Size: 7VLx6-3/16"Wx1VH -Weight: 2 lbs $59 g 5 each Qr 

MRM 174KF 2 for $99.95 



Switching Power Supply for APPLE II, II+ & //e™ 

■ Can drive four floppy disk drives and up to eight expansion cards 

■ Short circuit and overload protection • Fits inside Apple computer 

* Fully regulated t 5V @ 5A, + 12V® 1.5A, -5V @ ,5A. -12V @ 5A 

• Direct plug-in power cord included ■ Size: 9VL x 3VW x 2'V'H 
•Weight: 2 lbs. 

KHP4007 (SPS-109) $59.95 



4-CHANNEL SWITCHING POWER SUPPLY 

• Microprocessor mini-computer, terminal, medical equipment and process 
control applications ■ Input: 90-130VAC. 47-440HZ -Output: +5VDC § 5A. 
-5VDC 6 1 A. + 1 2VDC 6 1 A. - 1 2VDC § 1 A • Line regulations. 0.2% • Ripple: 
30mV p-p • Load regulation: • 1% • Overcurrent protection ■ Adj 5V main 
output ' 10% -Size: 6VL x 1VW x 4-1 5/1 6"H ■ Weight: 1 <-2 lbs 

FCS-604A $69.95 



IBM PCXT EQUIVALENT 130 WATT POWER SUPPLY 

UPGRADE YOUR PC! 

■ Input; 100V-130V/2OOV-260V selectable @ 47 to 63Hz • Output: 
+ 5VDC @ 1 5A. -5VDC @ 0.5A, +1 2VDC @ 4.2A, 1 2VDC @ 0.5A 
• Plug compatible connectors • Fits into IBM PC • Weight: 6 lbs. 

IBM-PS $169.95 



See Our New IBM 

Communications 

Program! 




$10.00 Minimum Order — U.S. Funds Only 
California Residents Add 6Vi% Sales Tax 
Shipping — Add 5% plus $1.50 Insurance 
Send S.A.S.E. for Monthly Sales Flyer! 



Spec Sheets — 30* each 
Send $1.00 Postaqe for your 
FREE 1985 JAMECO CATALOG 
Prices Subject to Change 




B 



Ifffl! 



m* 



W^ r— 



ameco 



ELECTRONICS 



VISA" 



1355 SHOREWAY ROAD, BELMONT, CA 94002 
4/85 PHONE ORDERS WELCOME — (415) 592-8097 Te/ex: 176043 



REQUIRES NO ADDITIONAL SYSTEMS FOR OPERATION 

Programs and validates EPROMs * Checks for properly erased EPROMs 
• Emulates PROMs or EPROMs ■ Loads data ffi RAM by keyboard • Changes 
data m RAM by keyboard ■ Loads RAM trom an EPROM ■ 664 RAMs can be 
used tor external microprocessor development • Compares EPROMs for 
r i .nirni differences • Copies EPROMs ■ Input 1 1 5VAC «> 60Hz ■ Assembled 
and tested • Si2e 1 5VL x SVDx 3VH ■ Wt 5% lbs • 271 6 Module included 

JE664-A EPROM Programmer $995.00 

JE665-RS232C INTERFACE OPTION - This option implements computer 

■ '(., ,| : i,.j4 >;HAM .llluwili;;.. ruri|,;jhT I;.. III. ,' n; Hil.lN ■. Stnr.' , u l< I '1,'int- 

fef EPROM data to and from the JE664 Sample program listing is supplied in 
MBASIC for CP/M computers ■ Documentation provided to adapt the software 
to other computers with an RS232 port ■ Specs 9600 Baud. 8-bit word, odd 
parity with ? stop bits ■ Assembled and tested - 2716 Module included 

EPROM Programmer 
JE664-ARS w/JE665 Option $11 95.00 



JE664-ARS COMMUNICATION PROGRAM 
For IBM-PC or XT and Compatibles 



(..si .-ominlfr) BASK i.iHjj.im ■ Easy to use, menu-driven ■ Prim hard- 
copies of EPROM data ■ View data in HEX and ASCII NEW! 

The JE664-ARS Communication Program was written lor quick interlacing 
between the JE664-ARS EPROM Programmer and the IBM-PC computer and 
compatibles Menu-driven program allows user to Load and Save EPROM 
data to and from the coiiinuvi ■' fli-.j>j-.y Misk D,ii.i i mIciui) t>v tin ■ :ir.|.ui.:' 
cm be ni'wi'il in Hex * ASt :ll form..it=; Prinli'd narrl i i '|>i.:s arc- also displayed 
in both formats Program is ideal for keeping archives ol master EPROMs on 
disk The program is compatible tor all EPROMs listed with the JE664 
Computer requirements IBM-PC. XT (or eg I with at least! 28K RAM and one 
■ ■■. ii |ji,it piiunal .Jni! p.iiallel port tnr pi ntet 

JE664-ARS-CP $49.95 

JE664-ARS Communications Program (5 V Disk and User's Instructions) 

JE664-CP CABLE $29.95 

Cable for IBM-PC to JE664-ARS Program (5 Shielded Cable & Connectors) 



JUMPER (Personality) MODULES J jn ,, .. ■■ ,p f .(M,n.ilit-/: Mm! jl. ■. 
16K. 32K, and 64K EPROMs "Please specify EPROM and manufacturer 
JUMPER (Personality) MODULE ' 



les lor 8K, J 
facturer § 
95 each A 



Inquiry 2I2 



APRIL 1Q85 • BYTE 77 



Inquiry 158 



FRIENDLY COMPUTER 



■ CONDIT ION w.rl- 



FRIENDLY SERVICE AT A FRIENDLY PRICE 

Friendly Computer Center, Inc. 

1381 Coney Island Avenue. Brooklyn, New York 1 1230 



C ITOH PROWRITER 
ALL AVAILABLE w/I.B.M ROM 

7500 105 C P S . .. 219.00 
8510 120 C PS 289.00 
1550 120 C PS- 15' 449.00 
8600 180 C P S 569.00 

STARWRITER 

F-10-40P 849.00 

A-10-20 479.00 



PRINTERS SPECIAL' 
OKIDATA 

Microline 84-200 C P S 669.00 

Microline 82-120 C.P S 225.00 

Microline 92 359.00 
Microline 92 w/Mac 

Compatible , 459.00 

Microline 93 589,00 




IBM 



IBM- HARD DISK SYSTEM 
IBM* PC256K 
10 MEG W/1 DS FLOPPY 
IBM MONO CARDS MONITOR 



$3249 



omplete 




DISK DRIVES FOR IBM 



Teac '. ht DS/DD 
Rana2000 IBM 



'49 



ADD ON BOARDS 

FOR IBM 

AST Six Pack Plus 64K 249.00 
Quadram Expanded Quadboard 
w/64K . 259.00 

Hercules Graphics Board 319.00 
Hercules Color Card w/Parallel 
Port . . 1 79.00 

Koala Speed Key System 149.00 
Mouse Systems Mouse w/Mouse 
w/PC Paint and Menue 159.00 
Hayden Sara gon III Chess 34.90 
Microsoft Flight Simulator 1137.90 
Hayden Saragon III for Mac 39.90 

De Base III 349.00 

Framework . . 379.00 

SYMPHONY CALL 

Star Acounting Partner 2 749.00 
Wot d star 2000 24900 



SUPER SPECIALS! 



TOSHIBA 

New Toshiba- 1340 
Toshiba-1351 

Juki 

Juki-6100 
Juki-6300 
Juki Tractor 6100 . 

New Gemm SG Series 



699.00 
1 249.00 

379 00 

call 

109.00 

Call 



MODEMS 

Hayes 1200B IBM 
Hayes 1200 RS232 
Hayes 300 RS232 
Micromoden HE 
HAYES 300 -for lie 
New Hayes 2400 



379.00 
459.00 
195.00 
235.00 
239 DO 
CAII 



PRENTICE POPCOM 

1200 Exlernal 34900 

120 fnternal 32900 

CompuServe Starter Kit 28.95 

The Source Starter Kit CALL 
Grappler Bufterd Plus 16K 

w/cable 149.00 



LETTER QUALITY PRINTERS 

ONE TIME SPECIAL' iwited quantity 
C ITOH - Leading Edge25cps 
15' Daisy Wheel 



$449 



C ITOH Tractor 



129 O0 




Peripherals by Apple 

Apple Drive lie J289 
Apple He Mouse 

paint 
Apple lie Mouse with 

paint S139 

Apple 1200 '300 Baud v^ 

Modem $389 

APPLEWORKS tor he or 

He $219 

Apple He Professional System 

• Apple He 128K Compuler 

• Apple Dual Disk Drive 
w/controller ■ card 

• Apple Extended 80 column 
Display Card 

• Apple Monitor II - 12' tilt'green 

• Pro-Dos Operating System 

Special $1439 
Apple lie with Monitor and Stand 
Mac -Mania Special $975.00 
Macintosh 512K with Imagewnter 
Special $2649 



MONITORS 

Princeton HX-12 Graphics 459.00 

New Amdek Color 300 269.00 

Amdek 310A 175.00 



TAXAN 

T115 12 "Green 
T116 12' Amber ... 
T127 12 Green t.B.M 
T122 12" Amber IBM 
210 RGB Color . . . 



H9O0 
12900 



159O0 
259 00 



FOR MAIL OflKRS: Send Money Order Certified Check. Mastercard VISA gladly accepted Add estimated price for 

shipping, handling and insurance WE WILL SHIP ORDERS AT THE ADVERTISED PRICES GUARANTEED UNTIL aprii 30 85 

Appla is a registered Irademark of Apple Computer, inc. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines 



sag (800) 258-5805 | (718) 252-9737 

eg Friendly Computer Center, Inc. r 

1381 Coney Island Avenue Brooklyn. New York 1 1230 



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COMPUTERS INC. 



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WORD PROCESSING 

Word Star 2000 
WordPerfect 4.0 
Volkswriter Deluxe 
PFS: Graph 
PFS: Write 
Easy writer II 

DATA BASE 

MANAGEMENT 

Knowledgeman 

dBase II 

dBase III 

Friday 

Pfs: File report pk 

R: Base 4000 

Quikcode II 

Infostar 

SPREADSHEETS 

Framework 
Multiplan 
Supercalc 3 
Visicalc IV 
Thinktank 
Calcstar 
TK Solver 



WE SHIP 
OVERSEAS 

TEL:(415) 340-1006 

851 Budway Road No. 303 

Burlingarne, CA 94010 
U.S.A. Telex 470477 Mons 

ACCOUNTING 

$264 IUS GL/AP/AR ea $295 



252 
169 

84 

84 

195 



275 
286 
369 
179 
162 
295 
155 
282 



369 
124 
199 
172 
109 
87 
269 



Peachpak 4 249 

Open Sys. ea 399 

State of Art ea 399 

BPI AR/AP/GL ea 395 

Great Plains Software ea 479 

HOME & RECREATION 



The Print Shop 
Bankstreet Writ. 
Dollars & Sense 
Fit Simulator 
Facemaker 
MindProber 
Mastertype 
Zargon II 



34.99 
49.99 
64.99 
35.00 
23.99 
36.99 
29.99 
16.99 



SPECIALS 




Sidekick (pro) 




37.99 


Sidekick (unpr 


o) 


54.99 


Turbo Pak: 




74.99 


Pascal-Tutor 


-Toolbox 


Taxadvantage 




49.99 


64K/9 chips 




25.99 


Paperback Wr 


tei 


29.99 


Executive Writer 


54.99 



Payment: Mastercard, Visa, COD, Money Order or Check. Pur- 
chase Orders welcomed from qualified institutions. Prices subject 
to change. No surcharge for Visa/Mastercard. Shipping UPS sur- 
face per item $4.00 within USA. Calif. Residents add sales tax. 



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tially beneficial application of computers. Schools should 
be paying attention to computers not because they will 
take over our lives or because everyone has to be a pro- 
grammer but because computers are part of the solution 
to education problems. 

The Future 

Computers will be really useful to the average person only 
when they can be used with no training at all. Schank sees 
advisory systems in areas such as finance, medicine, and 
law becoming available within the next few years. Sophis- 
ticated learning systems, with cognitive abilities, will be 
available within a decade, Schank says. And within 50 
years, he predicts, there will be integrated world-knowl- 
edge systems capable of learning about new domains; 
their most effective role will be as librarians and con- 
sultants, figuring out what we need to know about a sub- 
ject and the right way to explain it to us. 

Al may change the way we look at ourselves. One of 
its by-products will be the opportunity for an informed 
public. People lack the information they need because 
they don't want to appear stupid, bother an expert, or pay 
lots of money for advice. In the future, people will be able 
to obtain expert advice of all kinds, easily quickly, and 
inexpensively from computers. Of course, we should 
evaluate computer advice as carefully as we would that 
from any other advisor with a stake in our decision. 

Criticism 

Schank is best, and worst, when hypothesizing. He has 
made a career out of playing mind games, and most of 
those he presents are fascinating. However, he occasion- 
ally slips into an overly optimistic view of computers and 
the future. He says that machines will take over the most 
unpleasant human jobs and will provide people with the 
information they need to run their daily lives. I think this 
will be more a function of what people seek rather than 
simply what computers can provide. 

Audience 

The Cognitive Computer is not for those people who are in- 
terested in the engineering behind Al programs. Schank 
does not include details on how Al programs go together, 
what languages they are written in, and what kinds of hard- 
ware they run on. His contribution is to put thinking com- 
puters in perspective and show us where we can go with 
them. 

It is a credit to his science of understanding how humans 
understand that Schank writes with such clarity He dem- 
onstrates a genuine concern for how computers and their 
Al software will affect human lives, Schank has a healthy 
perspective on scientific progress: he doesn't believe that 
every aspect of human thought can or should be modeled 
on computers. ■ 

Darrow Kirkpatrick is an applications engineer at Development 
Associates Controls (POB 1049, Carpinteria. CA 93013). 



78 



BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 360 



\bu can buy a 

less expensive diskette 

and not save a thing. 



One can understand the temptation to buy a less 
expensive diskette. 

Rather than a Dysarf diskette. 

After all, the less expensive diskette is probably 
almost as good. And should you run into a bad one, 
well, it didn't cost that much, anyway 

Right? Not quite, 

\bu see, a less expensive diskette is by definition 
less diskette. And the few pennies you save are worth 
a great deal less than what you have to lose. 

Namely, your data. 

That's why it makes more sense to spend a bit more 
for a Dysan diskette. 

Every Dysan diskette you buy will record and 
retain all your data all the time. 

"feu can be sure of that because every 
Dysan diskette is certified 100 percent 
error free and backed by our lifetime 
warranty* 



So next time you're tempted to buy a less expensive 
diskette, ask yourself this question. 

Can you really afford it? 

For the name of the Dysan dealer nearest you, call 
toll free (800) 551-9000. 

Dysan Corporation, 5201 Patrick Henry Drive, PO. 
Box 58053, Santa Clara, CA 95050. 



Dysan 



Inquiry 131 



Somebody has to be better 
than everybody else. 




' Warrant) details are inside even Dysan box. 
Dysan is a registered trademark of Dysan Corporation. 
1985, Dysan Corporation. 

APRIL 1985 • BYTE 



Give people the tools they need, 
and there is no limit to what they achieve. 



Announcing the first major 
breakthrough in word processing 
technology since WordStar. 

Now, state-of-the-art 
comes easy. 



Introducing WordStar 2000, a totally new 
word processing program from the makers 
of WordStar. 

WordStar 2000 removes all limits from 
word processing. From what you can create. 
From what you can achieve. 

Because WordStar 2000 lets you do 
everything. 

Easily. 

From windows, to undo, 
to spelling correction, WordStar 2000 
does it all. And more. 

WordStar 2000 gives you the works. 

"Windows" allows you to work on different 
documents— simultaneously. "Undo" lets you 
replace text you mistakenly removed. A built-in 
spelling corrector checks and corrects mis- 
spellings from over 97% of the most commonly 
used words. 

WordStar 2000 also has a "typewriter 
mode" to fill in forms or envelopes easily. Plus 
"format sheets',' which give you ready-made 



headings, tabs and margins at the touch of one 
key It can even create and update footnotes. 

Finally, a truly integrated 
word processing system. 

WordStar 2000 goes well beyond words. 

It comes with a built-in five function math. A 
built-in mail merge enables you to mass produce 
form letters. Get our special Plus package and 
you also get a built-in mail list data base that 
allows you to create, update and sort your own 
mailing lists. Also a built-in indexer. Not to 
mention built-in telecommunications capabilities. 

All integrated together, so you never have 
to leave the program. 

The only word processing program 

that interacts with you on your level, 

whatever your level. 

Before we created WordStar 2000, we studied 
the way people worked, and thought. We also 
drew from our experience with over 1,250,000 
WordStar owners. 



80 B YTE • APRIL 1985 




As a result, the keys you 
press are the keys you'd expect to press ("c" for 
copy, "p" for print, etc.). You may also use your 
computer's function keys. Menus have been 
uniquely designed for easy access to all functions. 
And MicroPro's exclusive "tutor-in-your- 
computer™ " makes learning fast and fun. 

WordStar 2000 is the easy word processing 
program you'll never outgrow. Of course, the 
original WordStar and WordStar for PCjr will con- 
tinue to provide substantial and proven word 
processing capability for those with more modest 
budgets. 

See your local MicroPro dealer today or call 
(800) 227-6703 [in CA (800) 632-7979] for the 
dealer nearest you. 

So you can remove all limits from what you 
can achieve. 



WORDSTAR 




Now available for IBM PCVATVXT* and compatibles with 256K 
RAM. Upgrade from WordStar to WordStar 2000 through your dealer, 
or call MicroPro Customer Update (800) 2275609, 9am-3pm P.S.T. 



Now there are no limits 1 : MicroPro. 



Inquiry 412 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 81 




I weni ro look or rhe MBC -550 
nexr day' 



A<haM found mode me on owne' 're 
Dill SudbnnK Byre Mag a. 



A Custom 

System For 

Less Than a 

Clone 

TM 
The Silver Fox will run mosr of rhe 
I best-selling programs for rhe IBM-PC like 
rhe PFS series Wordstar Mulnplon d BASE II 
Flight Simuloror and Lorus 1 2 3 

But rhe basic Silver Fox gives you more 

I hardware rhan other 8068 systems including 

256K of PAM. 4 video ourpurs a 1 2" high- 

resolunon monitor a full 25x80 display 

I and o superior keyboard with a big rerurn 

key 

Also included as srandord equipment is 
rhe besr free software bundle m rhe business 
including 



MS-DOS 2 1 1 


HAGEN-DOS 


Color BASIC 


GV BASIC 


Wordstar 3 3 


Eosy Writer 


Spell 


Mail Track 


FILEBASE 


PC File ill 


CalcSrar 


Games Graphics 


PD Disk 


OS Tutor 



Bur rhe big feature rhe IBM-PC and its 
clones can't march is rhe Silver Fox 1 6 
mega byres of storage Even though the 
Silvet Fox drives can store more rhan twice 
as much information rhey can also read 
and write ro standard 160K. 320K and 
360K formats 

Because rhe Silver Fox is born on a 
totally automated line in Japan, it is simply 
mote telioble rhon PCs that are assembled 
by hand 5o we bock each Silver Fox with a 
1 1 mired one year warranty 

If you didn't think your 

$1397 

would buy you this much computer simply 
dial 

1-600-FOfWOX 

and leave your name ond address at rhe 
beep. We'll rush you our Silver Fox catolog 
that will tell you how ir can 



PRINTERS 




Epson FX-SO -^£$180 off 

Epson 

F0v-80FT ... -^^$100 off 

Tolly Spirit 80 $254 

Okidara 925*^ $125 off 

Okidara 935PPte ... $210 off 

Okidara 84 Coll 

SrarSG-10 $229 

SrarSIVl5 $599 

Dataproducts 

8050 loaded' $1344 

Tolly 160L $589 

Panasonic 1091 $298 

Toshiba 1040 $695 

Toshiba 1351 . $1198 

LETTER QUALITY 

Powerrype $299 

| Juki 6100 $389 

Juki 6300 .... $719 

Silver Reed 400 $249 

Silver Reed 500 $299 

Silver Reed 550 $409 

Silver Reed 770 $724 

NEC's Call 

Daisywrirer 2000 $824 

Diablo 620 $715 

Diablo 630 API $1499 




• IfW ff lf l^ i C ^Mitt 



ITU" 



* More Free Software * 

Along with all the free greor software you get with a Sanyo MBC 
550 Scottsdale Systems includes 3 extra disks with ( 1 ) OS Tutot- 
Teachesyou everything you need ro know about rhe operating sysrem 
right on your system (2) 1 5 gomes for rhe Sanyo 550 a S2° (retail) 
value (3) Daremare an appointment keeper with a perpetual 
calendar (4) IS Manager Allows you to change the structure of 
existing InfoStar files (5) PC File (6) 10 public domain gomes (7) 
diagnostics ond utilities and (8) Sketch A graphics/ drawing program 
Tirren m Sanyo Color Graphics BASIC 



©Sanyo 555-2's 



i ( vou plan ro purchase a Sanyo MBC 555-2 or a single drive MBC 550 2 
>ou ve made on exceHenr choice The Sanyo MBC 550 series is the 
"jwest priced 8068 MS DOS sysrem bar none Plus with the single dtive 
55G 2 sysrems you receive MS DOS 2 1 1 Sanyo Color Graphics BASIC 
^'ordsrar 3 3 CalcSrar and Easy Writer I 

Wirh rhe 555 2 sysrems you also receive your choice of DoraSrar 
,J -eportStor SpellSrar and MailMerge or Easy Wnrer II Easy Mailer Fasy 
Planner and Easy Filer 

We have sold more Sanyo microcompurers rhan any orher dealer 
n the United States Our prices have also been the lowest or among 
•he lowest in rhe country ond are presently too low to advertise 

Bur we wouldn r have became the largest Sanyo dealer in rhe 
:>unrry if all we offered was low prices We include more free softwate 
•han orher dealers we con install boards or extra memory for o modest 
natge and we stock tefetence manuals for out customers 

Our soles staff knows rhe Sanyo system because rhey use Sanyo 
omputets themselves and unlike others who sell the Sanyo system 
A-e re on authorized Sanyo service center with techs on staff if you plan 
ro buy o Sanyo give us a call we II offer you a great price and o gieor 
deal more 




Columbia's 



I If you re looking for maximum compatibility 
n prices ond nationwide service you 

I should consider buying o Columbia from 
Scorrsdale Systems Eoch system comes with o 
huge software bundle including MS-DOS 2 1 
Basica Perfecr Writer Perfect Calc Perfect 
Filet. Perfecr Speller Fost Graphs Home 
Accountant Plus Space Commanders ATI 

I Tutorials and T.I M. IV We have the lowest 

| prices on all Columbia computers including 
the new 4220 desktop with 256K 2220 

I portable with o built-m 9" monitor Your 



choice 



$1698 



While they last 

complete systems 

Sanyo 1100s 



Our lowesr price ever on o complete duol 
dtive system Each Z80 based Sanyo 1 1 system 
includes builr-m 320K (formatted) disk drives a 
cooling fan a built-m 1 2" 25x80 green phosphor 
momrot a parallel port and a senal port ond o 
great keyboatd wirh 1 5 special funcnon keys 
'enabled under both WordStar and BASIC) ond 
o bulir-in palm resr 

Plus eoch sysrem comes wirh CP/M Sanyo 
BASIC ond o complete MicroPro series of software 
including Wordstar 3 3 MailMerge SpellSrar 
DaroSror PeporrSrar and CalcSrar We pretesr 
each sysrem. and rhey re backed by over 75 
service cenrets nationwide 

As someone who wrore us pur it My local 
dealer says you couldn t possibly sell this whole 
package for 5888 because he sells rhe WordStar 
alone for $495 

Well rhe local deoler is pamally correct 
because while rhey last we re selling the whole 
package for 



SINCE 1980 



TELEMARKETING ONLY If you plan to visit please coll first for on appointment. Prices listed 
are for cosh and include o 3% discount We sell on o Ner 30 basis to Fortune 1200 | 
companies ond universities. No CO D s or A.P O s.POs odd 2%. Viso Mastercard add 3% 
Az residents add 6% Prices subject to change product subject to availability 
Petsonal/company checks take 3 weeks ro clear All items listed are new with I 
manufacrurets warranty. 0-20% restocking fee for returned merchandise Shipping extra- 
products ore F.O.D. point of shipment Software is not warronned for suitability Registered 
trademarks: Televideo-Televideo Sysrems Inc ; Stiver FoxTM HAGEN-DOS- Scorrsdale | 
Systems Ltd Com muter- Visual Computer Incorpotated 



Houstin Instruments 

DMP-29 51 795 

DMP-40 $745 

DMP-41 S2340 

L orher models coll i 





Altos Systems . . . big discounts, local installation 



Scorrsdale Sysrems m. 

617 N. Scorrsdale Road, Suite D, Scorrsdale, Arizona 85257 

~ (602) 941 -5856 [™ 

Coll 8-5 Mon.-Fri. 
A 

Jp^ We participate in arbitration for business and customers rhrough the Better 
Business Bureau of Maricopa County 



$848 



OLYMPIA IMP 



:W 




IS IT SICK TO 
LOVE A PRINTER? 

If you love your Okidara 92 or Epson FX-60 
don t read any further because the new 
Olympia NP is rated as faster is noticeably 
quiter and has a near letter qualiry mode 
-har is much superior ro anything in irs price 
■ lass 

Plus unlike the Okidata or rhe Epson rhe 
Olympia comes with adjustable ttactot 
f eed Cos well as friction feed) as standatd 
equipment The tractor feed is rhe push- 
type and rhe NP has a rear bar so rhar ir 
works grear with continuous ferns 

The NPuses Jandard Epson rype ribbons 
comes with the quality that has made 
Olympia a world leader m typewriters and 
is backed by nationwide setvice 

To quore PC magazine The ( NP ) printer 
is a sure rhmg if it falls into your price range 
and even if it doesn't it may be worth 
considering 

If you re considering rhe purchase of an 
Okidara an Epson, or even o Toshiba give 
us a call ond ler us send you an actual print 
sample from rhe Olympia NPand additional 
mformarion 

Because if you were ro buy an Epson 
FX-80+ or an Okidara °2 with rracrors at 
rhe lowesr advertised price anywhere you 
would be paying about $ 1 00 more for on 
inferior printer Scorrsdale Systems sells the 
Olympia NP wirh a 1 0' shielded cable for a 



$044 



82 BYTE- APRIL 1985 



EVENT QUEUE 



April 1985 



• BUSINESS SHOW 
Business-Expo, various sites 
throughout the U.S. This 
show features exhibits and 
services related to office 
technology. Contact Interna- 
tional Business Expositions 
Inc., 200 East Northland 
Towers, 15565 Northland Dr., 
Southfield, MI 4807 5-5378, 
(313) 569-8280. April-May 

• ROBOTICS, MATHE- 
MATICS, COMPUTER 
LECTURES-Robotics Lec- 
ture Series and Colloquium 
Series, Room W-117, Mathe- 
matics & Science Building, 
Montclair State College, 
Upper Montclair. Nj. Month- 
ly lecture series featuring ex- 
perts in computer science, 
mathematics, and robotics. 
Contact Gideon Nettler, 
Department of Mathematics 
and Computer Science, 
Montclair State College, 
Upper Montclair, Nj 07043, 
(201) 893-4294 or (201) 
893-5132. April-May 

• INTELLIGENT MACHINES 

Machine-Intelligence Classes, 
Turing Institute, Glasgow, 
Scotland. Among the classes 
offered are Foundations of 
Artificial Intelligence" and 
"Cognitive Modeling as a 
Basis for Expert Systems." 
Contact The Turing Institute, 
George House, 36 North 
Hanover St., Glasgow Gl 
2 AD, Scotland; tel: 041- 
5 52-6400. April-June 

• MEMORY CARDS 
STUDIED-Memory-Card 

Technology, Columbus, OH. 
Business, industrial, and 
technological concerns will 
be addressed. Panel discus- 
sions and exhibits. The fee 
is $495. Contact Phil Wells, 
Battelle Memorial Institute, 
505 King Ave., Columbus, 



OH 43201-2693, (614) 
424-7249. April 10-11 

• SYSTEMS DEVELOP- 
MENT AND FOURTH 
GENERATION— Structured 
Techniques Using Fourth 
Generation Languages, 
Chicago, 1L. This seminar ex- 
plains how to use fourth- 
generation languages in a 
structured systems develop- 
ment environment. Contact 
Digital Consulting Associates 
Inc., 6 Windsor St.. Andover, 
MA 01810, (617) 470-3870. 
April 10-12 

• COMMUNICATIONS 
TECHNOLOGY FOR THE 
NONVERBAL-The Fourth 
Annual Conference on Com- 
munication Technology: 
Technology and Nonspeak- 
ing Children, loseph Stokes 
Auditorium, Children's 
Hospital of Philadelphia, PA. 
Up-to-the-minute information 
on the use of technology 
with nonverbal children will 
be presented. Concurrent 
sessions will address on- 
going research, computers, 
and treatment strategies. 
The registration fee is $95. 
Contact Joan Bruno, 
Children's Seashore House, 
4100 Atlantic Ave., POB 
4111. Atlantic City. NJ 08404, 
(609) 345-5191, ext. 278. 
April 12-13 

• MAC IS FEATURED 

Mac Fair, Creese Student 
Center, Drexel University, 
Philadelphia, PA. Seminars, 
demonstrations, and ex- 
hibits. Student-sponsored. 
Contact MacFair, The 
DUsers, Creese Student 



Center, Drexel University, 
Philadelphia. PA 19104, (215) 
895-2 573. April 13 

• COMPUTERS AND 
PEOPLE-CHI '85: Human 
Factors in Computing Sys- 
tems, Hyatt Regency at 
Embarcadero Center, San 
Francisco, CA. Contact ACM 
Conference Management, 1 1 
West 42nd St., New York, 
NY 10036, (212) 869-7440. 
April 14-18 

• OPTICAL STORAGE 
INVESTIGATED-The 1985 
Materials Research Society: 
Symposium D, Golden Gate- 
way Holiday Inn, San Fran- 
cisco, CA. The mass-storage 
technologies symposium will 
investigate optical data 
storage. Areas to be ad- 
dressed include write-once 
and erasable media, read- 
only technology substrates, 
and lasers. Contact D H. 
Davies, Symposium Co-Chair, 
3M, 420 North Bernardo 
Ave., Mountain View, CA 
94043. April 15-18 

• SEMINAR CONSIDERS 
CAD— Computer-Aided 
Design, Ramada Inn, 
Rochelle Park, NJ. A seminar 
featuring PCAD and Auto- 
CAD products. Contact 
Compu-Sales Corp., 1096 
Goffle Rd., Hawthorne, NJ 
07506, (201) 427-5949. 
April 16 

• BUCKEYE SHOW 

The Ninth Annual Computer 
Fair, University of Dayton 
Arena, OH. Terminals, micro- 
computers, and word pro- 
cessors to be displayed. 



IF YOU WANT your organizations public activities listed in BYTE's Event 
Queue, we need to know about them at least four months in advance. Send 
information about computer conferences, seminars, workshops, and courses 
to BYTE, Event Queue, POB 372. Hancock. NH 03449. 



Contact Dan Schumacher, 
University of Dayton, 300 
College Park Ave., Dayton, 
OH 45469, (513) 229-3511. 
April 16-17 

• DBM AND FOURTH 

GENERATION-Database 
Management Systems and 
Fourth Generation Lan- 
guages for Personal Com- 
puters. Atlanta, GA. Topics 
include approaches for 
managing data, operational 
considerations, and manage- 
ment issues. The fee is 
$795, Contact Software In- 
stitute of America Inc., 8 
Windsor St., Andover, MA 
01810, (617) 470-3880. 
April 17-19 

• OFFICE, DP EQUIPMENT 

CeBIT '85, Hannover, West 
Germany. More than 1 300 
exhibitors from more than 
2 5 countries will display of- 
fice equipment and data- 
processing technology. Held 
in conjunction with the Han- 
nover Fair. Contact Han- 
nover Fairs Information 
Center, Route 22 East, POB 
338, Whitehouse, NJ 08888, 
(800) 526-5978; in New 
Jersey, (201) 534-9044. 
April 17-24 

• NETWORK CONTROL 
AND MANAGEMENT 
Network Management/ 
Technical Control, Marriott 
Copley Place, Boston, MA. 
Diagnostic and test in- 
struments will be among the 
products displayed. Contact 
Louise Myerow. Registration 
Manager, CW/Conference 
Management Group, 375 
Cochituate Rd.. POB 880, 
Framingham, MA 01701. 
(800) 225-4698: in 
Massachusetts, (617) 
879-0700. April 18-19 

(continued) 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 83 



Inquiry 178 



HARMONY VIDEO & COMPUTERS 

2357 CONEY ISLAND AVE.. BROOKLYN. NY 11223 

800 VIDE084 OR 800-441 1144 OR 718-627-1000 





COMMODORE 64 




APPLE 2C 






$149.95 




$889.95 




,^M#~" 


APPL 




GEMINI SG 10 


<&t^ 




$839.95 




$215.95 








"PRINTER SPECIALS' 






Anadex 


',.! 


Epson FX 100 * 




Ok i mate 10 


127 


Brother HRi 5 XI 


349, 


Epson LQ 1500 


996 


Olympiaro 


304 


Brother HR 35 


777 


Gemini Sq 10 


216 


Panasonic KXP 1091 


255 


Brother Keyboard 


'."< 


Gemini SCi 15 


J5i 


Panasonic KXP 1090 


169 


! Citizen MSP 10 


329 


HP Laser Jet 2678 


Panasonic KXP 1092 


379 


Citizen MSP 15 


488 


Juki 6100 relevtdeo 


371 


Panasonic kxp 1093 


562 


Corona Laser 2369 


Juki 6300 


""■ 


Panasonic KXP 3151 


460 


Daisywnter 


■ •' 


Man nesman Spirit 80 


n.'..- 


Powertype 


279 


Delta SD 10 


352 


Mannesman 160L 


529 


Ouadjet 


' 


Delta SD 15 


431 


Mannesman t80L 


739 


Radu SB 10 


461 


Diablo620 API 


b/H 


NEC 2050 


t. ig 


Radix SR i r i 


570 


Dynax DX 15 XL 


342 


NEC 3550 1297 


RitemanBlue + 


226 


Epson RX 80 FT *- 


285 


NEC 7730 1 


629 


Silver Reed Exp 550 


378 


Epson RX80 


:.•>■ 


NEC 8850 1 


F,/'< 


Silver Reed Exp 500 


286 


Epson RX 100 


374 


■■> lata 92 




Silver Reed Exp 770 




Epson FX80 


■':<■: 


Okidata93 


564 


Toshiba 1340 
Toshiba 1351 


678 
1213 



WOW! WOW! WOW! 



Macintosh 
Apple 2C 



ATARI 

800 XL 
1027 Printer 
1050 Drive 
Indus Drive 
1025 Printer 



MODEMS 

Hayes 1200 
Hayes 1200B 
Hayes 300 
Micromodem 2E 
Access 123 



834 
1679 
887 

473 



IBM 

PC w/Dnve 

PC XT 

PC Portable w/Dnve 

AST Six Pack 

Tallqrass 20 Meg 

Quad Board 

Keytromcs 

Hercules Color 

Hercules Moii- u hron 

Per syst Color Card 

Persyst Monocard 

Planlronics 

PC wr 1 10 Meg Hard Df 

Bernouh Box 

10 Meg Drive 



ZENITH 

ithPC2i50 

nth PC 15152 
ithPCl6l 52 



1449 
306 ■ 
CALL 
239 
2 174 
224 
159 



409 

a m 

1 ■)<,., 

399 



MONITORS 

Tidek 300 Green 
mdek 300 Amber 
nber 



310A 
C..I-.F 300 
Color 500 
Color 600 
Color 700 
Color 710 
Taxan2l0 
Princton HX12 
Taxan 122A 
Taxan 420 



550 n s 
555 DS 
CRT 70 



COMMODORE 



800-441-1144 



1541 Disk I 
1702 Mom 
MPS 802 



Powerful Single Board Computer 
Includes CP/M Plus on Disk 




iw era 

i es the me. 1 popuiai rrw n pi 
/«0. as Us main C PU MSC ICO runs at 4 MH7 vwthoul 
any wait states Thewhole system is tncorpora 
Mifjriqii.ilJty four l.iye' I'' . ■ ,.r - .vv- ,, r u , only 145mm 

• -■'! iii>- system requirps only I : *\n \ 
M + 5 Volts and t Amps at + 12 Volts 

Banked CP/M Ploi Included 
i piM Plus [3.0 banked] n m. imied on disk witti all 
manuals cp/m Plus is upwardly compatible *nh cpim 
.' . up l i'ii luUf 1 1 ii' Sll !'(i'()NLjyci, thPMAf and RMAC 
macro assemblers and the LINK-80 loader MSC-ICOs 
uustom BIOS provides support for multiple disl ' irmai' 

• ■ ' i ■ n-i'i i.iitrul System spn iti. . .ti a .■■ 
'nrmatting. disk c.opy">f|. defining runct* n 
'■■ attributes rsalso included 

128Kb RAM 

One 64K bank Of memory is rtevocefl ro CP/M and its 

disl .!■ he bli ' w) Hi theothei W Pan! 

. ■■'■'• '„'! only 
provides mc i (rams, but rt significantly 

rncreases the speed of titsk Ifi 

Internal Floppy Oltk Controller 
larUANSI tan lard I 

>]nvf". Mi ,1 v.T !'■!■/ "I ■ l.-'i" .Tld tin inaf, 
•8 SSSD ,'43 Kb 
•8 DSDD, 1.2Mb 
• S 1(4 DSDO, 320Kb 
•S 1(4 DSOD, SOOKb 
■ S-1/4 QMD. 1.2Mb 

Up to tour drives of any density or sue can Pi 
netted toMSC ICO Both 5 1(4 and 8 men connectors are 
r. irdi ■" 

High Speed CRT Controller 

MSC-ICO contains an 80 * 24 Imp memory mapped CRT 
ntfotlei i ■ outpul composite or separate to 
: J- ■- r - 

line, reverse video, and semrgrapnu ■-. are 

< uivi' escapi i ■ ■ we an i ctensioi til Dl i ■ 
rwned to emulate i it 



^l ^ ^^ ^^ New Items: 

Includes CP/M A0 on rJs* *H 

Mountain Side Oomputer 

Video, 128Kb, CP/M Plus™, and more 



Two BS232C Ports 

MSi ICO cot . rtme , ploi 

■■.■■.■ 

grammabte foi baud rati • stO| bits, data formal and 

■ 

jumper Sele I 

Centronics Parallel Port 

A standard Cenironir s parallel port allows MSC ICO to 
tner ('j,iralirM iievrcr", 
Parallel Keyboard Port 

MSC-ICO connects to any ASCII parallel ki 

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Inquiry 431 for Dealers. Inquiry 432 for End-Users. 



EVENT QUEUE 



• COMPUTER FESTIVAL 

The Tenth Annual TYenton 
Computer Festival. Trenton 
State College, Trenton, N|. 
Talks, tutorials, user-group 
activities, exhibits, computer- 
graphics theater, games, and 
a 50-acre outdoor elec- 
tronics flea market are some 
of the highlights of this an- 
nual event. Contact Ms. 
Marilyn Hughes, Trenton 
State College, Millwood 
Lakes CN 5 50. TYenton, NJ 
0862 5, (609) 771-2487. 
April 20-21 

• AIDS FOR EDUCATORS 

AEDS/ECOO 85: The 
Twenty-Third Annual Conven- 
tion of the Association for 
Educational Data Systems 
fAEDS), Hilton Harbour Cas- 
tle, Toronto, Ontario, 
Canada. A forum for edu- 
cators to exchange ex- 
periences and to keep up to 
date on developments in 
educational computing. The 
theme is "Computing Knows 
No Borders." Co-hosted by 
the Educational Computing 
Organization of Ontario 
(ECOO). Contact AEDS/ 
ECOO '85, c/o OISE, 2 52 
Bloor St. W, Toronto, Ontario 
M5S 1V6, Canada; in the 
U.S., AEDS/ECOO '85. 1201 
1 6th St. NW, Washington, DC 
20036. April 21-27 

• CAD FOR ARCHITEC- 
TURE, ENGINEERING 

CADDMania: Causes and 
Cure, Sheraton TWin Towers, 
Orlando, FL. Techniques for 
computer-aided design and 
drafting for architecture and 
engineering. The fee for the 
full three days is $175; the 
daily rate is $100. Contact 
Pat Johnson, CEPA Inc. 
15713 Crabbs Branch Way, 
Rockville, MD 20855, (301) 
926-7070. April 22-24 

• SPEECH IN FOCUS 

Speech Tech '85, Vista Inter- 
national Hotel, World Tnade 
Center, New York City. 
Speakers and exhibitors will 
focus on voice synthesis and 
recognition. Registration is 



$195. Contact Media Dimen- 
sions Inc., POB 1121 Gracie 
Station, New York, NY 
10028, (212) 772-7068 or 
(212) 680-6451, April 22-24 

• DECISION-SUPPORT 
DISCUSSED— National Con- 
ference on Decision-Support 

Systems, Washington, DC 
Examines the implementa- 
tion and integration strate- 
gies of decision-support 
systems into management. 
T\vo days of workshops. The 
fee is $74 5. Contact Con- 
ference Manager, U.S. Pro- 
fessional Development In- 
stitute, 1620 Elton Rd.. Silver 
Spring, MD 20903, (301) 
44 5-4400. April 22-2 5 

• PUBLIC NETWORK 
OPERATIONS-X.25 and 
Packet Switching Networks, 
Atlanta, GA. This course 
covers the internal opera- 
tions of a packet-switching 
network and its implementa- 
tion. International standards 
are also covered. The fee is 
$795. Contact Elaine Had- 
den Nicholas, Department of 
Continuing Education, 
Georgia Institute of Tech- 
nology, Atlanta, GA 30332- 
0385, (404) 894-2 547. 

April 23-2 5 

• TRADE SHOW, CON- 

FERENCE-Electro/85 and 
Mini/Micro Northeast-85, 
New York City. Areas to be 
covered include artificial in- 
telligence, communications 
and networks, consumer 
electronics, high-density data 
storage and personal com- 
puting. Contact Electronic 
Conventions Management, 
8110 Airport Blvd., Los 
Angeles. CA 90045. (213) 
772-2965. April 23-25 

• COMPUTER APPLICA- 
TIONS EXPLORED 

Perscomp 85, Sofia, 
Bulgaria. An international 
conference on the applica- 
tions of personal computers 
and the problems en- 
countered in using them. 
Contact Dr. Marcel Israel, 



84 BYTE 



APRIL 198^ 



EVENT QUEUE 



Bulgarian Academy of 
Sciences, Institute of In- 
dustrial Cybernetics and 
Robotics, 113 Sofia, Acad. G. 
Bonchev St.. BI. 12. Bulgaria; 
tel: 72-46-98; Telex: 22836 
ITKR BG. April 2 3-26 

• EXPERT SYSTEMS 

Expert Systems and 
Knowledge Engineering, 
Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, 
Ruschlikon/Zurich, Switzer- 
land. The theme is "Essen- 
tial Elements of Advanced 
Information Technology." 
Contact Dr. T Be mold, 
Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute, 
CH-8803, Ruschlikon/Zurich, 
Switzerland. April 2 5-26 

• MICROS IN EMPIRE 

STATE— The Fourth Annual 
New York Computer Show 
and Software Exposition, 
Nassau County Coliseum, 
Uniondale, NY. Contact Ann 
Katcef, Com pu Shows, POB 
3315, Annapolis, MD 21403, 
(800) 368-2066; in Annap- 
olis, (301) 263-8044; in 
Baltimore, (301) 269-7694; in 
the District of Columbia, 
(202) 261-1047. April 25-28 

• VIRGINIA COMPUTING 

The Fourth Annual Virginia 
Computer Show and Soft- 
ware Exposition, Pavilion, 
Virginia Beach. VA. Contact 
Ann Katcef, CompuShows, 
POB 3315, Annapolis, MD 
21403, (800) 368-2066; in 
Annapolis, (301) 263-8044; 
in Baltimore, (301) 269-7694; 
in the District of Columbia, 
(202) 261-1047. April 25-28 

• EQUIPMENT SALE 

Produx 2000: Wholesale 
Expo '85, Civic Center, 
Philadelphia, PA. Six hun- 
dred booths of computers, 
communications devices, 
and business equipment for 
sale. Contact Vertical 
Marketing Corp., POB 557. 
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004, 
(215} 457-2303. April 26-28 

• SPRING WITH 
COMMONERS-COMMON'S 
Spring '85 Conference. 



Louisville, KY More than 
2 50 presentations are 
planned. Contact COMMON, 
Spring '85 Conference, Suite 
1717, 43 5 North Michigan 
Ave, Chicago. IL 60611, (312) 
644-0828. April 27 -May I 

• INTELLIGENT VISION 

Intelligent Vision Systems, 
Holiday Inn, Monterey, CA. 
The technical and marketing 
aspects of intelligent vision 
will be covered. Contact 
Richard D Murray, Institute 
for Graphic Communication 
Inc., 375 Commonwealth 
Ave, Boston, MA 02115, 
(617) 267-9425. April 28-30 

• INTRO TO UNIX 

Introduction to the UNIX 
System, Atlanta, GA. The 
pros and cons of UNIX will 
be covered. Contact Digital 
Consulting Associates Inc., 8 
Windsor St., Andover. MA 
01810, (617) 470-3870. 
April 29-30 

• C FOR ENGINEERS 

C Programming for Engi- 
neers, University of 
Michigan, Dearborn. A short 
course and workshop. Con- 
tact Professor R. E. Little, 
University of Michigan. 4901 
Evergreen Rd., Dearborn, MI 
48128, (313) 593-5241. 
April 29~May 3 

• KNOWLEDGE ENGI- 
NEERING— Knowledge Engi- 
neering: A Short Course, 
University of Tennessee 
Space Institute, Tullahoma. 
Contact Professor Moonis 
Ali, University of Tennessee 
Space Institute, TuIIahoma, 
TN 37388-8897, or call the 
Short Course Office at 
(615) 455-0631, ext. 278. 
April 29-Maw 3 

• COMMERCIAL Al, HIGH- 
TECH CONFERENCE-AI 

1985: Artificial Intelligence 
and Advanced Computer 
Technology Conference/Ex- 
hibition, Convention Center, 
Long Beach, CA. More than 
20 technical sessions as well 
[continued] 



"There's no magic to using 
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Fred Molinari, President 



There's no trick to it. 

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Our boards 

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And these boards just plug into the PC's backplane. 
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Comprehensive 
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IBM PC is a registered trademark of IBM Apple II is a registered trademark of Apple Computer Corp. Tl Profes- 
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Equipment Corp. COMPAQ is a registered trademark of COMPAQ Computer Corp. 



Inquiry 109 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 85 



Inquiry 4 I 5 




New 64K SBC 

Only 

$ 375. 




4"x6" 

Requires no terminal. Includes 
Video Controller and CP/M® 2.2 

Runs any size floppy drive. 

Other models include Hard 
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128K or 256K RAM, and 8088 



64K SBC includes: 

• 6MHz Z80B 

• Video Controller 

• 2 Serial Ports 

• 4 Parallel Ports 

• I/O Expansion 

CPMisa registered 
trademark ot 
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• Source Code and Drivers 
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• CP/M'' 2.2 
Call our Toronto 
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Or write: Megatel 
1051 Clinton St., 
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14206 



— Substantial OEM Discounts Available 



EVENT QUEUE 



as panel discussions and 
product displays are 
planned. Contact Tower Con- 
ference Management Co., 
33 1 West Wesley St., 
Wheaton, IL 60187. (3 12) 
668-8100. April 1>0-May 2 

• MEETING ON LINE 
National Online Meeting, 
Sheraton Centre Hotel, New 
York City. On the docket are 
formal paper presentations, 
product review sessions, 
exhibits, and special work- 
shops and seminars trans- 
mitted via satellite. Contact 
Thomas Hogan, National 
Online Meeting, Learned 
Information Inc., 143 Old 
Marlton Pike, Medford, N] 
08055. (609) 654-6266. 
April 30-May 2 



May 1985 



• SUMMER SEMINARS 
Summer Seminar Series, 
Rochester Institute of Tech- 
nology, NY. A series of one- 
week seminars. Titles include 

introduction to Linear Sys- 
tems and Digital Signal Pro- 
cessing," "Basic 6800/6809," 
and "Advanced Digital 
Logic." Contact Yvonne Fish. 
School of Engineering Tech- 
nology Rochester Institute 
of Technology, One Lomb 
Memorial Dr., POB 9887, 
Rochester, NY 14623, (716) 
475-2915. May-\une 

• MICROELECTRONIC 
ENGINEERING 

Microelectronic Engineering 
Conference, Rochester In- 
stitute of Technology, NY. 
Technical papers and tours 
of microelectronic engineer- 
ing facilities. Contact Dr. 
Lynn Fuller, Microelectronic 
Engineering Program, 
Rochester Institute of Tech- 
nology, One Lomb Memorial 
Dr., POB 9887, Rochester. 
NY 14623, (716) 475-2035. 
May 1 

• SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING 
AND AUTOMATION-The 



First Scientific Computing 
and Automation Conference 
and Exposition, Convention 
Center, Atlantic City, N|. For 
practitioners and managers 
in analytic chemistry, bio- 
technology/biomedical 
research, clinical chemistry, 
and engineering. Product 
displays. Contact Expocon 
Management Associates Inc., 
3695 Post RcL Southport. 
CT 06490. May 1-3 

• SPECIAL EDUCATION 

SOFTWARE-National Con- 
ference on Special Educa- 
tion Software, Radisson 
Mark Plaza, Alexandria, VA. 
The theme is "DISCover the 
Possibilities." Product dis- 
plays and demonstrations. 
Registration; $50. Contact 
Elsa Glassman, The Council 
for Exceptional Children, 
Department of Professional 
Development, 1920 Associa- 
tion Dr., Reston, VA 22091, 
(703) 620-3660, ext. 261. 
May 2-3 

• COMPUTERS AND 
WRITING-UCLA Con- 
ference on Computers and 
Writing: New Directions in 
Teaching and Research, Uni- 
versity of California, Los 
Angeles. Contact Dr. Lisa 
Gerrard UCLA Writing Pro- 
grams, 371 Kinsey Hall, 
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 
90024, (213) 206-1145. 

May 4-5 

• FAULT-TOLERANT 
DESIGN— Introduction to 
Fault-Tolerant Microcomputer 
Systems, Wisconsin Center, 
Madison, Presentations will 
emphasize practical applica- 
tions. The fee is $650. Con- 
tact William C. Dries, Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin-Extension, 
Dept. of Engineering and 
Applied Science. 432 North 
Lake St., Madison, Wl 
53706, (800) 262-6243; in 
Wisconsin, (608) 262-2061, 
May 6-8 

• INTEGRATED OPTICS 

ECIO '85: The Third Euro- 

[continued) 



8t> 



BY T E • APRIL 198S 



Inquiry 254 



THE PROFESSIONAL'S CHOICE 



Lotus 
1-2-3 

*299 



Lotus 
Symphony 

'419 



dBase III Framework MultiMate 

$339 '339 '259 



WordStar 
2000+ 

'319 



Software 

Word Processing Editors 

EASYWRITER II 

SYSTEM $219 

FANCY FONT $139 

FINAL WORD $189 

MICROSOFT WORD $239 
MICROSOFT WORD 

W/MOUSE $289 

MULTIMATE $259 

PFS: WRITE $ 95 

SAMNA WORD III SCall 
VOLKSWRITER 

DELUXE $159 
VOLKSWRITER 

SCIENTIFIC $309 
THE WORD PLUS 

(OASIS) $105 

WORD PERFECT $249 

WORDPLUS W/BOSS $319 

WORDSTAR $199 

WORDSTAR 2000 $269 

WORDSTAR 2000+ $319 
WORDSTAR 

PROFESSIONAL $259 

XYWRITE ll+ $229 

Spreadsheets/ 
Integrated Packages 

ELECTRIC DESK $209 

ENABLE $459 

FRAMEWORK $339 

LOTUS 1-2-3 $299 

MULTIPLAN $135 

OPEN ACCESS $299 

SMART SYSTEM $559 
SPREADSHEET 

AUDITOR $ 79 

SUPERCALC 3 $199 

SYMPHONY $419 

TK! SOLVER $259 

Desktop 

Environments 

DESK ORGANIZER $129 

GET ORGANIZED $159 

SIDEKICK $ 45 

SPOTLIGHT $109 

Communications/ 

Productivity Tools 

CROSSTALK $105 

PROKEY $ 89 

RELAY $ 99 

SMARTCOM II $109 



Database Systems 

ALPHA DATA BASE 

MANAGER II $179 

CLOUT V 2.0 $139 

CONDOR III $299 

DBASE II $269 

DBASE III $339 

INFOSTAR+ $319 

KNOWLEDGEMAN $269 
PFS: FILE/PFS: 

REPORT $169 

POWERBASE $219 

OUICKCODE III $169 

R BASE 4000 $259 

Languages/Utilities 

CONCURRENT DOS $189 

C86 C COMPILER $299 

DIGITAL RESEARCH 

C COMPILER $219 

DR FORTRAN 77 $219 

LATTICE C COMPILER SCall 

MICROSOFT C 

COMPILER $309 

MS BASIC COMPILER $249 

MS FORTRAN $239 

NORTON UTILITIES- 
NEW SCail 

TURBO PASCAL $45 

Project 
Management 

HARVARD PROJECT 

MANAGER $219 

HARVARD TOTAL 

PROJECT MANAGER $299 
MICROSOFT 

PROJECT $159 

SCITOR PROJECT 

5000 W/GRAPHICS $289 

Professional 
Development 

MANAGEMENT EDGE $159 
SALES EDGE $159 

THINK TANK $119 

Home/Personal 
Finance 

DOLLARS AND 

SENSE $119 

FINANCIER II $119 

HOWARD TAX 

PREPARER 85 $195 

MICROTAX SCail 

MANAGING YOUR 

MONEY $129 



Graphics/Statistics 

ABSTAT $279 

AUTOCAD SCall 
BPS BUSINESS 

GRAPHICS $229 

CHARTMASTER $239 

CHARTSTAR $209 

DR DRAW $199 
ENERGRAPHICSW/ 

PLOTTER $279 

EXECUVISION $259 
GRAPHWRITER 

COMBO $389 

MS CHART $159 
OVERHEAD 

EXPRESS $139 

PC DRAW $259 

PC PAINTBRUSH $ 89 

PFS: GRAPH $ 95 

SIGNMASTER $179 

STATPRO SCall 

STATPAK-NWA $329 

STATPAC-WALONICK $299 

Accounting Modules 

BPI $329 

GREAT PLAINS $479 

IUS EASYBUSINESS $309 

MBA $369 

OPEN SYSTEMS $399 

PEACHTREE $299 

REAL WORLD $469 

STATE OF THE ART $389 
STAR ACCOUNTING 

PARTNER $249 
STAR ACCOUNTING 

PARTNER II $599 

Hardware * 

Multifunction Boards 

AST ADVANTAGE SCall 

AST 6 PAK PLUS (64K) $249 
AST 6 PAK PLUS 

(384K) $449 

AST MEGAPLUS II (64K) $269 

AST MEGAPAK (256 K) $349 

QUADBOARD (64K) $269 

QUADBOARD (256K) $399 
QUADBOARD EXP. 

(64K) $269 
QUADBOARD EXP. 

(384K) $469 

QUAD 512 + (64K) $269 

ORCHID BLOSSOM SCall 

PERSYST SCall 

TECMAR CAPTAIN(64K) $279 

TECMAR WAVE (64K) $209 



Display Boards 

AST MONOGRAPH PLUS SCall 
EVEREX GRAPHICS 

EDGE $419 

HERCULES GRAPHICS 

CARD $329 

HERCULES COLOR 

CARD $179 

PARADISE MODULAR 

GRAPHICS CARD $285 

PARADISE 

MULTIDISPLAY CARD $285 
PERSYST SCall 

PLANTRONICS 

COLORPLUS $419 

PRINCETON SCAN 

DOUBLER SCalf 

STB GRAPHICS 

PLUS II $309 

TECMAR GRAPHICS 

MASTER $489 

TECMAR VIDEO VAN 

GO GH $259 

TSENG ULTRA PAK $449 

Displays 

AMDEK 300G/300A $139/149 

AMDEK 310A $179 

AMOEK COLOR II + $459 

PRINCETON HX-12 $469 

PRINCETON MAX-12 $179 

PRINCETON SR-12 SCall 
QUADRAM 

AMBERCHROME $179 

ZENITH 124 AMBER $145 

ZENITH 135 COLOR SCall 

Modems 

AST REACH 1200 SCall 

HAYES 1200 $459 

HAYES 12008 $399 

HAYES 2400 SCall 
VENTEL 1200 

HALF CARD SCatl 

Accessories 

CURTIS SURGE 

PROTECTORS SCall 
EPD SURGE 

PROTECTORS SCall 

GILTRONIX A/B SWITCH SCail 
MICROBUFFER INLINE 

(64K) $264 
MICROFAZER INLINE 

(64K) $219 

64K RAM SET $40 

256K RAM SET SCall 

8067 MATH $150 



Printers/Plotters 

AMPLOT II $859 

C. ITOH Seal! 

COMWRITER II $CaM 

COMWRITER420 SCall 

DIABLO 620/630 SCall 

EPSON FX-100* SCall 

EPSON LQ-1500 SCall 

EPSON JX-80 SCall 

JUKI 6100 $419 

NEC P3 $899 

NEC 2050 $769 

NEC 3550 $1399 

OKIDATA 84P $729 

OKIDATA 93P $619 

QUME SPRINT 1155 $1569 

TOSHIBA P1351 $1279 
SWEET P 6 PEN 

PLOTTER $899 

Emulation Boards 

ASTPCOX $949 

AST 3780 $609 

AST SNA $689 

AST BSC $ 29 

BLUE LYNX SCall 

CXI 3278/9 SCal! 

IRMA $869 

IRMALINE $999 

IRMAPRINT SCall 

QUAD 3278 $949 

Input Devices 

KEYTRONIC 5151 $189 
MICROSOFT 

MOUSE $139 

PC MOUSE W/ PAINT $159 

Mass Storage 
ALLOY PC-BACKUP 

20MB $1649 
ALLOY PC-DISC 

20MB $1769 

IOMEGA 10 + 10 MB $2895 
MAYNAROWS-1 10MB SCalf 

SIGMA SCall 

SYSGEN IMAGE SCall 
TALLGRASS HARDFILE 

♦ TAPE $C»H 

TEAC HALF HEIGHT $189 

Networks 

AST PC NET SCall 

CORVUS NET SCall 
DIGITAL RESEARCH 

STARLINK $1199 

ORCHID PC NET SCall 

•CALL FOR SHIPPING COSTS 



Samna 
Word III 

'CALL 



Chart-Master 

'239 



AST6Pak 
Plus 

'249 



Quad Board ISmartmodem I Smartmodem 
Expanded64K| 1200B 1200 

'269 '399 '489 




LOWEST PRICE 
GUARANTEE!! 

We will match current 

nationally advertised 

prices on most products. 

Call and compare. 



fie 



p f U 



Diskette 

Library 

Case 

with your order 




TERMS: 

Checks— allow 14 days to clear. Credit processing— add 3%. COD orders— cash, 
M.O or certified check— add $3.00. Shipping and handling UPS surface— add $3.00 
per item (UPS Blue $6.00 per item). NY State Residents— add applicable sales tax. 
All prices subject to change. 



MON.-THURS. 9:00AM-8:00PM 
SUN. & FRI. 9:00AM-4:00PM 



1-S00-221-1260 

In New York State call (718) 438-6057 




Softline Corporation 
P.O. Box 729, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230 
TELEX: 421047 ATLNUI 



Inquiry 352 



APRIL I985 -BYTE 87 




TARGET 


MARKET 


i 


ESI 


i 


NORTHEAST 


UEST CENTRAL 1 


■V 


i. . 


EAST CENTRAL 



* 



A black border may appear around the Palette slide image, 
which will be imperceptible when projected. 



Now last minute presentations 

can be made from 

your personal computer. 

In color. In house. In minutes. 



Introducing Polaroid Palette. 



Whether your presentation is in 30 
minutes or 30 days, the new Polaroid 
Palette Computer Image Recorder will 
make it easier. Priced at under $1800* it 
lets you make Polaroid instant 35mm 
slides or prints from personal 
computer-generated data. Right at your 
desk. So now you can create a presen- 
tation in minutes. Without sending out 
for processing, paying premiums for 
rush service or risking the security of 
your confidential information. 

Works with the graphics 

packages of the IBM PC or XT, 

DEC Rainbow or PRO, Apple He 

or 11+ and AT&T 6300. 

The Polaroid Palette is designed to 
work with many graphics software 
packages. In fact, when using such 
popular programs as Graphwriter, 
Chart-Master, Sign-Master, DR Draw 
and DR Graph, Palette can virtually 
double both the horizontal and vertical 
resolution of your monitor. Plus, a 

Inquiry 305 



"backfill" feature reduces raster lines 
for a smoother, more finished appear- 
ance. The result— presentation quality 
slides. On-the-spot. 

Color 35mm slides, even from a 
black and white CRT 
Think of it as an artists palette. Be- 
cause Palette "paints" your graphs, 
charts and text. You're choosing from 
up to 72 colors. If you don't want red, 
press a few keys— its green. And if 
you're not the artistic- type, Polaroid 
has developed a menu of color sets: 
combinations of colors that have been 
specially coordinated to complement 
your presentations. And all of this is 
yours, even if you have a black and 
white monitor. 

Lets you make last minute 

changes or add 

up-to-the-minute information. 

The Polaroid Palette is the fast, con- 
venient, low-cost way to prepare slides 
for your presentation. And perhaps 



even more important, Palette allows 
you to keep confidential information 
confidential. You won't have to send 
your work out to anyone again. 

So why wait until the last minute to 
find out about Polaroid Palette? Call 
this toll-free number or return this 
coupon. Because with Palette you'll 
make your deadlines, in no time. 



For a demonstration, call toll-free, or mail the 
coupon to Polaroid Corp,, E.I. Marketing, Dept. 
604, 5^5 Technology Sq., Cambridge, MA 02139. 

CALL 1-800-225-1618 

D Send information. □ Have representative call. 



Name- 



Company - 
Address — 
City 



.Zip_ 



Telephoned 

PC make and model _ 



= Polaroid 



B-4/85 
•Suggested list price. Polaroid* 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 89 



EVENT QUEUE 



pean Conference on Inte- 
grated Optics, Berlin, 
Federal Republic of Ger- 
many. More than 2 50 engi- 
neers and scientists from 
Europe, Japan, and the 
United States will discuss 
the potential of optics for 
communication, signal pro- 
cessing, and instrumenta- 
tion. Contact ECIO '85 Con- 
ference Secretariat, Frau I. 
Weber-Zuckarelli, Heinrich- 
Hertz-Institut Berlin GmbH, 
Einsteinufer 37, D-1000 
Berlin 10, Federal Republic 
of Germany. May 6-8 

• SPRING COMDEX 

COMDEX Spring, Atlanta, 
GA. More than 750 com- 
panies will exhibit. Contact 
The Interface Group Inc., 
300 First Ave, Needham, 
MA 02194, (800) 325-3330; 
in Massachusetts, (617) 
449-6600. May 6-9 

• MAPLE LEAF 
COMPUTING-The 1985 
Canadian High Technology 
Show, Civic Centre, Ottawa, 
Ontario, Canada. Product 
displays, speakers, and 
tutorials. Contact Canadian 
High Technology Show, Suite 
214, 2487 Kaladar Ave., 
Ottawa, Ontario K1V 8B9, 
Canada, (613) 731-9850. 
May 7-8 

• MEMORY CARDS 
STUDIED-Memory-Card 
Technology, Crowne Plaza, 
San Francisco, CA. See April 
10-11 for details. May 8-9 

• PC DISPLAYS 

PC Expo, Convention Centre, 
Montreal Quebec, Canada. 
Contact PC Expo, 20 But- 
terick Rd., Toronto, Ontario 
M8W 3Z8, Canada, (416) 
252-7791. May 8-10 

• TOPICS IN COMPUTER 

LAW— The Sixth Annual 
Computer Law Institute, Los 
Angeles, CA. Topics on the 
docket include proprietary 
rights issues in the design of 
compatible products, prod- 
uct distribution, and anti- 



trust and copyright issues. 
Contact Cheryl Litrenta, 
University of Southern 
California Law Center, Uni- 
versity Park, Los Angles, 
CA 90007, (213) 743-2582. 
May 9-10 

• C CONVOCATION 

C85: The First International 
Conference on the C Pro- 
gramming Language. 
Ramada Renaissance Hotel, 
San Francisco, CA. A forum 
for programmers and devel- 
opers using or considering 
the use of the C language. 
Sessions on ANSI X3J11 
standard, portability, pro- 
gramming tools, and applica- 
tions. Contact Lifeboat 
Associates, 1651 Third Ave., 
New York, NY 10128, (800) 
847-7078; in New York, (212) 
860-0300. May 13-15 

• GRAPHICS FOR 
ENGINEERING, DRAFTING 

Computer Graphics for 
Engineering/Drafting Practice 
and Computer Graphics 
Workshop, University of 
Texas, Austin. These short 
courses stress learning the 
principles of computer 
graphics and seek to 
develop the ability to 
prescribe computer graphics 
equipment for engineering 
applications. Contact College 
of Engineering, University of 
Texas, Austin, TX 78712, 
(512) 471-3506. May 13-17 

• PROFESSIONAL 

TUTORIALS-Tutorials for 
Professional Development, 
Hyatt Hotel, Los Angeles, 
CA. A series of all-day 
seminars on software, logic 
programming, and communi- 
cations. Contact Gerry Segal, 
Association for Computing 
Machinery, 11 West 42nd St., 
New York, NY 10036, (212) 
869-7440. May 13-17 

• TEST MEASUREMENT 

EXPO-The 1985 Test and 
Measurement World Expo, 
Convention Center, San lose, 
CA. Conferences and tech- 
nology exhibits. Contact 



Meg Bowen, Test and 
Measurement World Expo, 
215 Brighton Ave., Boston, 
MA 02134, (617) 254-1445, 
May 14-16 

• MODULA-2 ENGI- 
NEERING— Software Engi- 
neering with Modula-2, 
Atlanta, GA. A course em- 
phasizing methods for 
building large-scale software 
systems in Modula-2. Prereq- 
uisite: knowledge of Ada or 
Pascal. The fee is $495. 
Contact Elaine Hadden 
Nicholas, Department of 
Continuing Education, 
Georgia Institute of Tech- 
nology, Atlanta, GA 
30332-0385, (404) 894-2547. 
May 15-17 

• OK SHOW 

The Eighth Annual Show & 
Tell Microcomputer Con- 
ference, University of 
Oklahoma, Norman. Micro- 
computer fans of all ages 
and levels of expertise come 
together to share ideas and 
demonstrate applications 
and hardware. Contact 
Richard V. Andree, Show & 
Tell Computer Conference, 
Mathematics Department, 
University of Oklahoma, 601 
Elm St, Norman, OK 73019. 
May 18 

• MANAGEMENT 
CONGRESS-Update '85, 
Sheraton Hotel, Brussels, 
Belgium. A briefing covering 
technological developments 
for those in the information 
management and micro- 
graphic industries. Contact 
Update '85, International In- 
formation Management Con- 
gress, POB 34404, Bethesda, 
MD 20817, (301) 983-0604. 
May 20-22 

• CAD TECHNOLOGY 

CAD 2001: The Countdown, 
Dallas, TX. Presentations on 
the future of computer-aided 
design. The fee is $900. 
Contact CAD Seminars Inc., 
Suite 400, 1 50 East River- 
side, Austin, TX 78704, (512) 
445-7342. May 22-24 



• SOFTWARE AND 
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 

Computer Software and 
Human Development Con- 
ference, Royal York Hotel, 
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 
Held in conjunction with the 
Third Annual Software 
Panorama, this conference 
will examine the impact of 
software development on 
business, education, health, 
and agriculture. Contact 
Reuben Lando, The Software 
Developers Association, 
Suite 500, 185 Bloor St. E, 
Toronto, Ontario M4W 1C8, 
Canada, (416) 922-1153. 
May 22-24 

• DISK STORAGE EXPO 

The 1985 International 
Videodisc, Optical Disk, and 
CD-ROM Conference and 
Exposition, London West 
Hotel, London, England. 
Workshops, presentations, 
and exhibitions, Contact 
Angela Suter, Meckler Com- 
munications, 11 Ferry Lane 
W, Westport, CT 06880, 
(203) 226-6967; in England, 
Alice Taylor, Meckler Com- 
munications, c/o Eurospan, 3 
Henrietta St., London WC2E 
8LU England; tel: 01 
240-0856. May 29-31 

• MANAGE PROGRAMS 

Configuration Management 
of Software Programs, 
Washington, DC Methods 
for controlling the costs of 
development, maintenance, 
and operation of software 
Contact Stod Cortelyou, 
Continuing Engineering 
Education, George Washing- 
ton University, Washington, 
DC 20052, (800) 424-9773; 
in the District of Columbia, 
(202) 676-8520. May 29-31 

• COMPUTER INTER- 
FACING— Personal Computer 
and STD Computer Interfac- 
ing for Scientific Automa- 
tion, Virginia Polytechnic In- 
stitute and State University, 
Blacksburg. A hands-on 
workshop with participants 
wiring and testing interfaces. 
The fee is $450. Contact Dr. 



90 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



EVENT QUEUE 



Linda Leffel, C.E.C, Virginia 
Polytechnic Institute and 
State University, Blacksburg, 
VA 24061, (703) 961-4848. 
May 30-]une I 



June 1985 

• LEARN TO BUILD 
PROGRAMS-First North 
American Summer School 
on Program Construction, 
Newport, RI. Methods for 
the effective construction of 
software will be taught. Con- 
tact Teleprocessing Inc.. 60 
State St., Boston, MA 02109, 
(617) 367-6227. ]une 3-12 

• INTERFACES FOR 
SCHOOL LABS-lnterfacing 
for School Laboratories, 
Miami University Oxford, 
OH. A workshop for sec- 
ondary-school and college 
teachers on the construction 
and use of interfaces for 
laboratory instrumentation. 
Contact Bill Rouse, 301 
McGuffey Hall, Miami 
University, Oxford, OH 
45056, (513) 529-2141. 

)une 3-14 

• COMPUTER 

MAINTENANCE 
Independent Computer 
Maintenance, Halloran 
House New York, NY. Con- 
tact Carol Every, Frost & 
Sullivan Inc., 106 Fulton St.. 
New York, NY 10038, (212) 
233-1080. \um 5-6 

• OPTICAL-STORAGE 

CONFERENCE-First Annual 
Conference on Optical 
Storage for Small Systems, 
Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles, 
CA. Contact Technology Op- 
portunity Conference, POB 
14817, San Francisco CA 
94114-0817, (415) 626-1133. 
}une 5-7 

• COMPUTERS FOR SALE 

Computer Supermarket, San 
Mateo County Fairgrounds, 
San Mateo. CA. Retailers, 
manufacturers, and dis- 
tributors will be selling hard- 



ware and software. Admis- 
sion is $7; children $3. Con- 
tact Microshows, Suite 203, 
1209 Donnelly Ave., Bur- 
lingame, CA 94010, (415) 
340-9113. June 8-9 

• COMPUTER VISION 
CONFERENCE-Computer 

Vision and Pattern Recogni- 
tion Conference, Cathedral 
Hill Hotel, San Francisco, 
CA. Submitted and invited 
technical papers. Contact 
Computer Vision and Pat- 
tern Recognition, POB 639, 
Silver Spring, MD 20901, 
(301) 589-8142. }une 9-13 

• MUMPS MEETING 
The Fourteenth Annual 
Meeting of the MUMPS 

Users' Group, McCormick 
Center Hotel, Chicago, IL. 
Tutorials, workshops, site 
visits, discussions, and ex- 
hibits. Contact MUMPS 
Users' Group, Suite 510, 
4321 Hartwick Rd., College 
Park, MD 20740, (301) 
779-6555. ]une 10-14 

• ROBOTIC STRATEGIES 
Robot Manipulators, Com- 
puter Vision, and Intelligent 
Robot Systems, University of 
Stirling, Stirling. Scotland. A 
short course for profes- 
sionals emphasizing the 
development of strategies 
for the solution of robotic- 
sensing, spatial-reasoning, 
and manipulation problems. 
Contact Director of the Sum- 
mer Session, Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, 
Room E19-3 56, Cambridge, 
MA 02139. [urn 10-14 

• NETWORK CONTROL 

AND MANAGEMENT-Net- 
work Management/Technical 
Control, Santa Clara Mar- 
riott, Santa Clara, CA. See 
April 18-19 for details. 
Jum 12-13 

• CLINICAL COMPUTING 

Computing in Clinical 
Laboratories: The Fifth Inter- 
national Conference, Stutt- 
gart, Federal Republic of 

[continued) 




PT'tt 



TM 



DISCOVER muLISP 

The Artificial Intelligence 
Package for Micros. 

muLISP includes: 

■ An integrated environment for A.I. program 
development. 

■ A high performance, pseudo-code compiler 
and interpreter for the LISP programming 
language. 

■ A resident, screen-oriented LISPeditorand 
debugging system. 

Available for your IBM PC™, MS-DOS™, 
CP/M™, and Apple™ II SoftCard computers. 

We also offer muMATH™, the symbolic math 
calculator for micros. 



Founded 1979 



1771 Aft 

s==! Worehou/e 

P.O. Box 11174, Honolulu, HI 96828-0174- (808) 734-5801 (AfterNoon PST) 
MC/VISA MCI ID: 241-7437 c 1985 Soft Warehouse 



■ I'd like to know more about muLISP 
and muMATH. Please send me more 
m information today. 



Name 

Address . 
City 



State. 



Zip- 



Company. 
Position 



I j 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 91 




100% FLAWLESS 
COPIES . . . 

. . . FAST! 



No need to tie up your valuable computer to duplicate 
diskettes , . . when VICTORY can provide you with a 
duplicator that will do the job flawlessly, and much 
faster. One button operation automatically formats, 
duplicates and verifies up to 8 diskette copies at the 
same time. 

VICTORY can supply you with literally dozens of 
standardized formats to match the protocol of virtually 
any current computer. In addi- 
tion, built-in utilities enable 
you to read or devise any for- 
mat you may require. If that's 
not enough, VICTORY can 
help you with unusual or 
unique formatting, serializing 
or copy-protecting problems. 

VICTORY duplicators are 
designed to be reliable. Each 
of the copy drives has a 
separate controller to increase 
copying throughput and 
ensure maximum uptime. 
VICTORY Duplicators use 
industry proven drives com- 
bined with 100% digital tech- 
nology . . . there are no 
analog circuits to slowly drift 
out of tolerance. 

Let us help free you from 
your disk-duplicating bottle- 
neck at a surprisingly 
attractive price. Write or call: 
VICTORY ENTERPRISES 
TECHNOLOGY, INC., 8910 
Research Blvd., Suite B2, 
Austin, Texas 78758— 
(512)450-0801. 







\M7 VICTORY 

\j7 ENTERPRISES 

^f Technology, Inc. 



EVENT QUEUE 



Germany. Topics on the 
agenda include databases, 
data presentation, and ex- 
pected developments. Dem- 
onstrations and exhibits. 
Contact PD Dr. Chr. 
Trendelenburg, Katharinen- 
hospital KG, Kriegsberg- 
strasse 60, D-7000 Stuttgart 
1, Federal Republic of Ger- 
many; tel: (07 11) 20 34-4 
82. lune 12-14 

• COMPUTERS IN 

CLINICAL LABS-Clinical 
Laboratory Computers, Sym- 
posium 1985, The Towsley 
Center, University of 
Michigan, Ann Arbor. Con- 
tact Dove Margenau, Office 
of Continuing Medical 
Education, The Towsley 
Center, Box 057, The Univer- 
sity of Michigan Medical 
School, Ann Arbor, MI 
48109-0010, (313) 763-1400. 
lune 12-14 

• INFO MANAGEMENT 
EXPO, CONFERENCE 

Info/West: The Western Infor- 
mation Management Exposi- 
tion and Conference, Con- 
vention Center. Anaheim, 
CA. Trade show for ex- 
ecutives and data-processing 
and management-informa- 
tion system managers. Con- 
tact Info/West, 999 Summer 
St., Stamford, CT 06905, 
1203) 964-8287. lune 12-14 

• FORTH CONFERENCE 
The 1985 Rochester FORTH 
Conference, University of 
Rochester, Rochester, NY. 
The focus will be on soft- 
ware engineering and man- 
agement. Contact Ms. Maria 
Gress, Institute for Applied 
FORTH Research, 70 
Elmwood Ave., Rochester, 
NY 14611, (716) 235-0168, 
lune 12-15 

• LOGICAL MACHINES 
CONFERENCE-The Second 
Annual Conference on Logic. 

Logic Machines, and Public 
Education, University of 
Houston-Clear Lake, Hous- 
ton, TX. Formal and infor- 
mal sessions, symposia, and 



workshops. Contact the 
Institute for Logic and 
Cognitive Studies, Univer- 
sity of Houston-Clear Lake, 
Box 269, Houston, TX 
77058, (713) 488-9274. 
\une 13-15 

• INTERNATIONAL SHOW 

The International Computer 

Show, Trade Fair Center, Col- 
ogne, West Germany, More 
than 3 50 manufacturers 
from more than 18 countries 
are expected to display their 
wares. Contact Messe- und 
Ausstellungs-Ges.m.b.H. 
Koln, Messeplatz, Postfach 
210760, D-5000 Koln 21, 
West Germany; tel: (0221) 
821-1; Telex: 8 873426 mua 
d. lune 13-16 

• PC IN BIG APPLE 

PC Expo, Coliseum, New 
York, NY. Seminars and 
product displays. Contact PC 
Expo, 333 Sylvan Ave., 
Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632, 
(800) 922-0324; in New 
Jersey, (201) 569-8542. 
lune 17-19 

• SOFTWARE FOR ENGI- 
NEERING— Engineering Soft- 
ware: Engsoft 85, The 
Fourth International Con- 
ference and Exhibition, Ken- 
sington Exhibition Centre, 
London, England. Exhibits 
and sessions of software for 
engineering. Contact Eiaine 
Taylor, Computational 
Mechanics Centre. Ashurst 
Lodge, Ashurst, Southamp- 
ton S04 2AA, England; tel: 
(042 129) 3223; Telex: 
47388 Attn. COMPMECH. 
lune 18-20 

• GRAPHICS IN SUNSHINE 

Computer Graphics '85 
West, Los Angles, CA. Con- 
tact National Computer 
Graphics Association, 8401 
Arlington Blvd., Fairfax, VA 
22031, (703) 698-9600. 
lune 2 5-27 

• CAD TECHNOLOGY 

CAD 2001: The Countdown, 
Boston, MA. See May 22-24 
for details, lune 26-28 ■ 



92 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 396 



Our multi-mode HERMES printers shake hands 
with all kinds of computers. Even some you've 




And for your IBM-PC™, 

we have created the fully 
compatible multi-mode 
HERMES PC-PRINTER 1 



Fully compatible with your IBM-PC™, tested with 
Easy writer™, Multiplan™, Lotus 1-2-3™ and other soft- 
ware packages, the HERMES PC-PRINTER 1 allows you 
to convert your personal computer to a heavy duty pro- 
fessional system. IBM-PC™ users who only pick the best 
will also appreciate : 

Its speed. Bi-directional, shortest path printing. 200 cps 
Data, 100 cps Near Letter Quality (single pass). 

Its resolution. Finest print quality available on a matrix 
printer. So good you can even print signatures. Bit 
mapping graphics in single, double and triple density 
modes. 

Its quality. Swiss high quality construction. Very high 
reliability for heavy duty use. 

Its versatility. Choice of printing styles with the 
complete IBM™ character set tables (226 chars.). Wide 
range of automatic sheet-feeders with 1 or 2 bins + 
envelopes, single document inserter, roll-holder and 
tractor. 

Its ease of use. Plug'n play installation. Plug it in, switch it 
on yourself. 

HERMES* 

The impressive printers 

Manufactured in Switzerland by HERMES PRECISA INTERNATIONAL, 
CH-1401Yverdon. 

HERMES printers are distributed in Australia, Austria, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, 
France, Greece, Hong-Kong, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Macao, Malaysia, 
New-Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, 
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA, West 
Germany. 

Contact factory direct for OEM sales of print-heads and printer mechanisms. 





To receive a sample of the finest quality matrix print-out 
and additional information on the HERMES PC-PRINTER 1, 
please return the coupon below. 



| Please send me more documentation about your PC-PRINTER 1 




Name^ 



Title 



Company 


Street 




City 




State 


Zip 


Phone ( 


) 



Send to: HERMES PRODUCTS, Inc. - Printer Division 

1900 Lower Road, LINDEN, NJ 07036, (201) 574 0300 



Inquiry 185 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 93 



Three more firsts 
from the people who 
invented the wheel. 






XEROX 



From day one, Xerox and Diablo 
have been known as the two best 
names in daisywheel printers. And 
now there are three more in the 
Xerox line to choose from. 

The Xerox Advantage D-25 
Diablo printer turns out letter qual- 
ity documents quickly and quietly. 
And it does all that for the price of 
a dot matrix printer. 

A^ < — ^At80 




c.p.s., the D-80IF is the fastest 
daisywheel printer ever made by 
Xerox. It has a built-in double bin 
sheet feeder. As well as 
the capacity to handle up 
to 16 computers at once. 

And the D-36 spells 
reliability. It averages 4,000 hours of 
printing between maintenance calls. 

But Xerox didn't stop there. 
Each of these new machines is 
compatible with most computers 
on the market, including the 
IBM-PC. And they're 
Jfo all easy to use. 




N, 



** 



They're also a part of Team Xerox, 
so they can be serviced by the 
national Xerox service force and 

authorized service loca- 
tions across the country. 

So if you're looking 
for the latest in daisy- 
wheel printing technology, go with 
the people who've been in the busi- 
ness the longest. Call 1-800-833-2323, 
exL 25, your local Xerox office, an 
authorized Diablo or Xerox dealer 
or send your business card to Xerox 
Corporation, DepL 25192, PO. 
Box 24; Rochester, NY 14692. 

For more information from Xerox, 
circle 405 on the Reader Service card. 



i 



./-■ 



XKROXw. Diablo" and the identifying 
IBM ' is a registered trademark of Inle 



of XEROX CORPORATION. 






WHAT'S NOT 



Knife the Mac 



Ennui Associates has an- 
nounced MacKnifer, a 
hardware attachment that 
mounts on the side of your 
Macintosh and sharpens 
knives, scissors, lawn-mower 
blades— anything in your 
home that needs sharpen- 
ing. With MacKnifer's 
patented double-action 
grinding wheel, you can 
easily sharpen any utensil in 
less time than it takes the 
Mac to open a file. Accord- 
ing to the manufacturer, 
MacKnifer is so easy to use 
that you can operate it 
within 30 minutes of taking 
it out of the box, Turn your 
spare computing time into 



Nouveau-Chic Luggage 




extra cash with a knife- 
sharpening business on the 
side ... of your Macintosh. 

For more information on 



MacKnifer, contact Ennui 
Associates, 52 502 Marginal 
Ave., Somnolencia, CA 
90541. 



The Spike Untermeyer 
Luggage Company man- 
ufactures hollow replicas of 
the most popular lap-size 
and transportable personal 
computers for use as travel 



bags by status-conscious 
travelers. For example, the 
Untermeyer Executive Port- 
folio resembles a Tandy 
Model 100, complete with 
movable (nonfunctional) 




keys. The Executive Portfolio 
flips open to reveal enough 
space for a pad, appoint- 
ment calendar, several pens 
and pencils, or a couple of 
peanut butter and jelly 
sandwiches for that quick 
executive snack. The 
Untermeyer Overnighter, 
easily confused with a Com- 
paq, TI, or IBM portable 
computer, is perfect for that 
sudden business trip, 

Untermeyer luggage is 
painfully authentic. The 
Overnighter is exactly half 
an inch too large to fit 
under the average coach 
airline seat, and the bottom 
of the case is heavily 
weighted to ensure that nas- 
ty crack on the shins when 
you maneuver past the flight 
attendant. 

For more information, con- 
tact the Spike Untermeyer 
Luggage Company Inc.. 442 
Glenwood Ave., Prosaic, NJ 
22104, 



One for the Road 

Honda Corporation has 
announced the Trans- 
porter, the first truly trans- 
portable computer. With a 
few simple twists, you can 
transform the Transporter 
from a portable computer 
(with full keyboard, 24-line 
by 80-column display and 
two microfloppy-disk drives) 
into a single-passenger auto- 
mobile. 

The Transporter runs on 
32 D-cell batteries (not in- 
cluded) with additional one- 
year battery backup for the 
ignition, which is in ROM 
(ride-only memory). Thus, if 
the Transporter won't start 
on a chilly winter morning, 
you can simply give it a 
cold boot to jog its memory. 

Although the Transporter 
is somewhat heavier than 
other portable computers, 
you can easily drive it 
through airport terminals. 
Service will be available 
through AAA (American 
ASCII Association), which 
provides pickup and 
delivery with no tote- 
charges. 

Options include the TP-100 
Printer Trailer, the 300- 
BeePS Modem, and a gen- 
uine Naugahyde keyboard 
cover. Honda has also an- 
nounced plans to release 
the SemiPortable, a 20- 
megabyte hard-disk system 
that transforms into an 
18-wheeI tractor/trailer 
(assembly required). 

The Transporter is 100 per- 
cent compatible with the 
popular Toyota Corolla and 
runs on most operating 
roads. The cost is $5995. 
For more information, con- 
tact Honda Corporation Ltd., 
2 Duryea Drive, Minikin, MI 
48101. 



96 BYTE 



APRIL 1985 



New Arrival 



Home on the Database 



Celebrity Software, maker 
of the Howard Cosell 
Word Processor and the 
Michael Jackson Spread- 
sheet, has announced the 
Princess Di Database. If your 
data is a royal mess, this 
hierarchical database will ar- 
range things in a neat suc- 
cession for you. You can ob- 
tain output from the system 
every nine months, with 
three levels of security: 
Mum's the Word, Rumor 
City, and Tell the World. 

Available at supermarket 
checkout counters, the 
Princess Di Database is 
priced at $49.95 from 
Celebrity Software, 1 3 5 
Pachelbel Canyon, San 
Regales, CA 90342. 



New Mag 



High Press Technologies 
(HirJIech) has an- 
nounced a new publication, 
Personal Photocopying. Designed 
to make photocopiers less 
threatening for the average 
person, the magazine will be 
written in nontechnical lan- 
guage that explains PRINT 
PAUSE, and CANCEL in 
language that a layperson 
can understand. 

Articles in the first issue of 
PPC will include "1001 Ways 
to Make Money with Your 
Photocopier," "Paper Jam- 
Deadly Threat to Your Busi- 
ness," and "Big Gray: The 
Xerox Story." 

Based on research done in 
its own offices. HipfTech has 
also announced Constant 
Coffeemaking. For a one-year 
subscription to either 
magazine, send $2 5 to POB 
123123, South Banausic, WI 
03458. 



ThinkFast Software has 
introduced a revolution- 
ary natural-language data- 
base designed for home 
management. MOM, the 
Model Management pro- 
gram, is a matriarchal 
database of home-related 
subjects that responds to 
plain-English queries. After 
entering information about 
your home, age, eating 
habits, and shoe size, you 
enter search phrases in the 

A Taste of Security 



format "Where is the 
screwdriver?" After a quick 
pass through its files, MOM 
responds, "Right where you 
left it-behind the TV set." 
Enter the search phrase, 
"Where are my sneakers?" 
and MOM responds with 
lightning speed, "I don't 
know where your sneakers 
are; I don't wear your 
sneakers." 

ThinkFast has also an- 
nounced a product for in- 




If merely erasing sensitive 
data is not enough for 
you, Soycure Systems of 
Tokyo has developed the 
ultimate in disk security. 
Made entirely of processed 
soybeans, Para soya Disks 
are writable, readable, and 
edible. Parasoya disks con- 
tain 84 percent more pro- 



tein than average floppy 
disks and are available in 
5 ^-inch (regular) and 
3 /2-inch (crunchy) formats. 

Available at computer and 
health stores everywhere, 
Parasoya Disks are priced at 
$50 per 10-pack from Soy- 
cure Systems, 1 Tufchuying, 
Tokyo, Japan. 



tegration with MOM, one 
that provides personal ad- 
vice and guidance. Decisions 
and Declarations (DAD) 
responds to the traumas of 
everyday living with such 
plain-English messages as, 
"You want to cry? I'll give 
you something to cry 
about!" and "Ask MOM." 

MOM and DAD are priced 
at $99 each from ThinkFast 
Software, Duitmy Way, 
Homeville, NC 28210. 

Keeping Time 
to Yourself 

Incognito, a low-profile 
time-management pro- 
gram for MS-DOS com- 
puters, combines an ap- 
pointment calendar with 
200 stock excuses for break- 
ing or avoiding social 
engagements. 

The Incognito calendar's 
avoidance categories in- 
clude: My Mate and I; The 
Car; Kids. Pets, and Rela- 
tives; Let Me Check With 
My . . . (accountant, boss, 
etc.); I'm Coming Down With 
. . . ; and Previous 
Engagement. 

Incognito's Fib-jogger utili- 
ty reminds you what you 
said to whom and tells you 
when you've ducked some- 
one more than a set 
number of times. The pro- 
gram also generates fake 
itineraries, resumes, and 
credit references. 

For your copy of In- 
cognito, send $395 to 
ApresHeures Computing, 70 
Main St., Paulsboro, NH 
03458, (800) 123-4567. Call 
after 6 p.m. Please allow 10, 
maybe 12 weeks for 
delivery 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 97 



Texas Instruments announces 
Dn L*S* Montejo Professional 





7 



'$W®R&: 



u 



Dr. L.N. Montejo* 

{ \irdiac Anesthesiologist, 

Mosfmi, Massachusetts. 



!S52i*F''- 



rfc.w 



fc->v 



the 

Computing System* 



No two individuals work alike* TI had 
unique answers to help Dr* L* S* Montejo 
keep his patients and his business healthy* 



U I used to walk out of the operating 
room with a clipboard and a chart " 
says Dr. L S. Montejo. "Now I walk 
out with a floppy disk." 

Dr. Montejo is a prominent anes- 
thesiologist who is pioneering the 
use of personal computers in heart 
surgery. His unique idea for making 
quicker, more informed decisions 
led to a unique solution from TI: a 
portable PC he could talk to. Con- 
figured to his exact needs from the 
wide range of TI options. 

"Using TIs Speech Command ," 
he says, "I can respond to drug 
reactions faster, with the PC mak- 
ing calculations as I speak to it. And 
my hands are free to do other things. 

"The information just flies by* 

But the computer organizes it, and 
by calling up color charts, I can 
make better decisions at a glance. It 
lets me provide better medical care." 

In his office, Dr. Montejo uses a 
desktop TI Professional Computer 
to keep the business side of his 
practice operating smoothly. 
"Having to wait on a computer is 
a waste of valuable time " he says. 
"TI runs software fast. And the TI 
screen has a lot better resolution 
than other monitors." 



His TI 855 printer also speeds up 
the paperwork. "We can use it to go 
from draft to letter quality imme- 
diately, and change typefaces very 
quickly by using the control panel 
instead of software commands." 

TI had what the doctor ordered 
to put together a complete PC sys- 
tem for his specific needs. Including 
a solution for a budding computer 
genius in his family. "My daughter" 
he says, "loves her Speak & Spell." 

TI has the right answers 
for the way you work* 

With TIs broad line of versatile 
computer products, you can put 
together a system unique enough 
to put your own name on it. Your 
TI dealer can provide you with 
just the right combination of 
hardware, software, service and 
support for your special needs. For 
more information and the location 
of your nearest TI dealer, call 
1-800-527-3500. 

Texas 
Instruments 

Creating useful products 
and services for you. 




From desktop, portable and briefcase PCs to minicomputers and a full line of printers, 
you can assemble a TI system as unique as you are. 



2775-06 
© 1985 TI 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 99 



W*HftgW 



(££ 



BYTE 



Features 



Ciarcias Circuit Cellar: 
Build the Home Run 
Control System, 
Part I: Introduction 

by Steve Garcia 102 

Coprocessing in Modula-2 

by Colleen Roe Wilson 113 

A Million-Point Graphics Tablet 

by lames Hawley 120 



IN JANUARY WE PRESENTED a real feast in the Features department; because 
we had no theme section, we were able to publish 1 1 articles on a wide vari- 
ety of topics. This month, the significance of our theme on artificial intelligence 
and the depth of coverage it required limited the space we had available for 
features. Next month we'll return with our usual number. 

As we hinted in the March Features introduction, this month Steve Ciarcia 
begins a three-part project that he's wanted to build for some time. The Circuit 
Cellar Home Run Control System takes up where Steve's first project of this 
type left off some years ago (see "Build a Touch Tone Decoder for Remote 
Control," December 1981, page 42). Imagine full programmable control over 
just about any outlet in your home. Lights can turn on and off automatically 
as you enter and leave a room. You can design a complex surveillance and 
security system that includes automatic emergency dialing. And you can phone 
home, check system status, and make modifications to the control system to 
suit your schedule. All in all, Steve was pretty happy with his original 1981 
design, but with recent technological advances and his eye for improvement, 
he developed the Home Run Control System to be a lot friendlier and deliver 
a lot more. 

In August 1984 the BYTE theme was Modula-2. Heralded by many as the 
language of the future, it also has detractors, some of whom point out that 
Modula-2 is only an upgrade of its Pascal ancestor with problems of its own. 
Colleen Roe Wilson's "Coprocessing in Modula-2" describes Modula-2 's facility 
for the development of concurrent programs, one of its significant differences 
with Pascal. 

If you have a Zenith Z-100 and are interested in exploiting its graphics 
capabilities, you might want to build "A Million-Point Graphics Tablet" based 
on Koala Technologies' KoalaPad. James Hawley shows you how to add the 
appropriate components and interface it to the Z-100's S-100 bus. With his 
graphics tablet, you can use a stylus instead of a light pen for pinpoint con- 
trol over your drawings. 

— Gene Srnarte. Managing Editor 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 101 




COPYRIGHT © 1985 STEVEN A ClARCIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 




CIRCUIT CELLAR 



BUILD THE 

HOME RUN CONTROL 

SYSTEM 

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 

by Steve Ciarcia 




Energy management, convenience, 
and security in one package 



Six years ago I presented an article on building a computer- 
controlled security system using an SDK-85 experimenters 
board. To this day, I still get letters asking for software and 
material sources. Since home/industrial energy and security 
management have been and still are a major interest (and 
little has been published since then), that article remains a 
popular reference for students and experimenters. 
As I look back on it now, I realize that my first home-control computer was 
engineered properly but was about as user-friendly as ENIAC. It's time to re- 
address the subject, bring the design up to date, and make this home-control 
system a real friend. 

1 conceive of this project as a simple computer control system equally ap- 
plicable in the home or factory. The choice of input sensors and output con- 
trols designates its primary application. 

Whether for industrial or home use control systems function similarly 
Specific input data is analyzed and compared to a predetermined set of ac- 
tion parameters. If a favorable comparison exists, the designated task is per- 
formed. For example, if a light is to be turned on at 2:00 p.m., the control 
system sees a negative request-affirmation comparison until that time. At that 
instant, the output of the control system turns on the light and then continues 
with the next request. In a control system configured as an alarm, the inputs 
would be from contact closures, and the outputs would be to bells, automatic 
dialers, and other such items. 

Whatever the application, control systems are designed to be either open 
loop or closed loop in function. An open-loop controller simply outputs its 
decision and forgets about it. Industrial control systems, on the other hand, 
require more assurance that the action has been performed. They close the 
loop by analyzing feedback signals from the operation being controlled. If 

{continued) 

Steve Ciarcia (pronounced "see-ARE~see-ah") is an electronics engineer and computer 

consultant with experience in process control digital design, nuclear instrumentation, and 

product development. He is the author of several books about electronics. You can write to 

him at POB 582, Glastonbury, CT 06033. 



PHOTOGRAPHED BY PAUL AVIS. STYLED BY JANE SUTTON 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 



103 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



a heating element is turned on, a cur- 
rent sensor in series with the ele- 
ment's power source or a temperature 
sensor next to the element indicates 
positively that the action has been 
performed. 

It is this open-loop versus closed- 
loop configuration that, for most ap- 
plications, defines whether a con- 
troller is consumer or industrial quali- 
ty. I beg to differ with the trend, 
however, and feel that it is about time 
a system successfully bridged the gap 
The Circuit Cellar Home Run Control 
System (HCS) is the result. 

My intention is not to directly ad- 
dress the industrial market with my 
HCS. Rather, I will apply some of my 
industrial process-control experience 
to produce a design that offers flex- 
ibility and reliability as a home-control 
and energy-management system. If 
you are in the process-control busi- 



ness, you will soon realize that its 
sophistication and cost-effectiveness 
make it ideal for dedicated industrial- 
control applications where you might 
ordinarily use an expensive program- 
mable controller. 

Home Run Control System 

Practically all commercial home- 
control systems use BSR X-10 remote- 
control power modules. They are sold 
under a variety of trademarks: Plug- 
N-Power, Sears Home Control, BSR 
X-10, and GE HomeMinder. These 
remotely controlled power switches 
turn the power on or off to lights and 
appliances that are plugged into 
them. A separate controller activates 
the individual switches by transmitting 
a coded command sequence through 
the power lines. Command controllers 
are available that perform timed or 
telephone-designated activations. 



The Plug-N-Power or Sears Home 
Control system is quite adequate for 
most open-loop applications. An at- 
tic fan that needs to run two hours a 
day to keep the attic cool could use 
a timer-activated BSR module. Simply 
set the command unit to turn the fan 
on from 1:00 to 3:00 every afternoon, 
for example. Of course, on really hot 
days the attic fan will need to run 
longer, and on rainy days you'll be 
wasting power. If you compensate 
(close the loop) by changing the run 
time each day, it is hardly a home- 
control system. Instead, it is merely a 
more convenient manual power 
switch. 

The solution is to use a true closed- 
loop control. By adding a 120- to 
135-degree thermostatic switch in the 
attic, the control system can know 
when the attic is hot and has to be 
exhausted. A 90-degree thermostatic 



6802 

MICROPROCESSOR 



16K BYTES 
RAM 



n 




TERMINAL MODEM 



J I 



SERIAL 
I/O 



u 



7*s 



7Y 



24K BYTES 
PROGRAM ROM 



KEYBOARD 
ENCODER 



<^> 



24-LINE BY 40- 
CHARACTER 
VIDEO -DISPLAY 
GENERATOR 



PARALLEL ENCODED OR 
SCANNED MATRIX KEYBOARD 



11 5 VAC 




POWER 
SUPPLY 




BATTERY 

BACKUP 


LINE 


i 












BSR 
TRANSMITTER 











COMPOSITE 

VIDEO TO 
MONITOR 



RF 

VIDEO TO TV 



Figure 1: A block diagram of the Circuit Cellar Home Run Control System. 



104 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



switch is also wired in. When the at- 
tic temperature reaches 135 degrees, 
the fan turns on. It turns off when it 
gets to 90 degrees. The BSR control 
modules could still provide the on/off 
power to the fan, but the control deci- 
sion is more adequately defined by 
directly monitoring the temperature 
with heat sensors than by simple 
timed activation. This way, the fan will 
stay on as long and often as needed. 
On cloudy or rainy days, the fan might 
not come on at all. (I am aware that 
special thermostatically controlled 
attic-fan switches can accomplish this 
specific task without a computer. 1 am 
not trying to find a specific solution 
but rather to demonstrate the two 
control approaches as they apply to 
general-purpose control systems.) 

The immediate answer to open-loop 
BSR control is to add more intelli- 
gence in the form of a computer. Pres- 
ently, many control systems on the 
market use personal computers. Using 
the parallel I/O (input/output) and 
display capabilities of the personal 
computer with a specialized BSR 
transmitter card installed, many com- 
panies have successfully designed just 
the kind of home-control system I'd 
want. However, such a seemingly 
economical approach uses the entire 
function of the computer. You can 
have a $2 500 Apple II home con- 
troller or suffer when the entire 
system grinds to a halt because 
you've loaded a word-processing pro- 
gram. Besides, it can cost $10 a month 
just to run an IBM PC 24 hours a 
day— and don't forget the cost of the 
uninterruptible power supply. 

Ultimately, successful computer- 
based energy-management and 
home-control systems must have 
completely dedicated functions. Try- 
ing to time-share tasks among games, 
word processing, and environmental 
control is simply more complicated 
than it's worth. The age of specialized 
computers is at hand. 

The Circuit Cellar HCS is designed 
specifically for that task. It is a single- 
board microprocessor-based con- 
troller that uses a combination of 
both open- and closed-loop control 
design. It takes advantage of the cost- 



effective BSR control modules and 
fully duplicates any of the manual, 
automatic, or timed functions present- 
ly supported in the BSR product line. 

The Circuit Cellar HCS closes the 
control loop with 16 hard-wired digital 
input and 8 TTL (transistor-transistor 
logic)-compatible hard-wired output 
lines. Relays, contact closures, motion 
detectors, and thermostatic switches 
can be connected to these I/O lines 
for direct "sense and respond" ac- 
tivities. It can also accommodate 48 
BSR modules. Figure 1 is a block 
diagram of the HCS. 

The 6802-based HCS is a stand- 
alone control unit (see photo 1) com- 
plete with battery backup. Photo 2 
shows the prototype circuit board that 



mounts inside the control unit. The 
HCS communicates with the user 
through either a serial terminal or 
video monitor and keyboard. In the 
terminal mode, RS-232C communica- 
tion is at 75 to 4800 bits per second 
(bps). 

The HCS optionally supports an in- 
tegral video-display generator to pro- 
vide a 24-line by 40-character display 
either directly to a composite video 
monitor or to a television set. A 
keyboard encoder allows connection 
of either an Apple Il-compatible 
parallel-encoded keyboard or an un- 
encoded scanned-matrix keyboard. 
Finally, the HCS can communicate 
with other systems. An additional con- 

{continued) 




Photo 1: Home Run Control System stand-alone control unit. 




Photo 2: HCS prototype circuit board. 



APRIL 1985 "BYTE 



105 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



nector has been provided to which an 
auto-answer modem can be attached 
(such as the Hayes 300 or 1200). 
When the modem answers and the 



CTS line is activated, the HCS switches 
its display to the modem data rate 
and allows the remote calling terminal 
to access and control the HCS. Unlike 



FRI APR 



8:94 PM 



ALARM SYSTEM ON 

MOTION DETECTED IN STOCK ROOM 

LIGHTS TURNED ON 

SILENT ALARM 

SECURITY NOTIFIED 



1111111 
1234567898123456 
1 BSR ON/OFF A 1111 
£ BSR DIMMER A 

3 BSR CYCLER A 

4 BSR OH/OFF B 

5 BSR ON/OFF C 

6 DIRECT OUT 

7 MESSAGES 1 

3 SUPERKEY " 



Photo 3: A typical status-display screen. At the top, the screen shows that an alarm 
has been triggered and that several preprogrammed actions have taken place. The bottom 
half of the screen indicates the status of all the output drivers. 



A REPORT, CREATE, OR DELETE EUENT 



D MANUAL RESTORE E AUTO RESTORE 

F RESTORE BY INPUT G SET DATE AND TIME 

H CLOCK ACCURACY I TIME FORMAT 

J TRACK SUNSET K DAYLIGHT SAUINGS 

I LIST EUENTS M SET LIST SPEED 



H **TOTAL RESET** LINES PER SCREEN 



P INPUT STATUS 



Q HOLD BY INPUT 



R DEFINE SUPERKEY S BYPASS MODULE 



T DELAY EUENT 



U SET BEEPER TIME 



U SET EUENT TO EXECUTE ONLY ONCE 
ENTER LETTER OF CHOICE <A-Z>? ■ 



Photo 4: The editing menu. You reach this screen from the status-display screen by 
pressing the space bar. All the functions will be explained in subsequent articles. 



auto-answer BSR units that allow com- 
mand input only, this option lets you 
view the complete status of all I/O and 
make program changes as well. 

The HCS can schedule to turn out- 
puts on or off based on combinations 
of the following conditions: 

a. time of the week (e.g., Tuesday 
at 4:32) 

b. time of the month (e.g., 22 nd at 
11:20) 

c. input line going high 

d. input line going low 

e. turn off after time delay (e.g., re- 
main on for 1 5 minutes) 

f. one-time action triggered by 
specific input or time 

When you want to create an event, 
various combinations of inputs and 
time can be specified. They are 

1. ON at specified time 
OFF at specified time 

2. ON at specified time 
OFF when specified input 
occurs 

3. ON when specified input occurs 
OFF at specified time 

4. ON when specified input occurs 
OFF when specified input 
occurs 

or 
ON while specified input occurs 

5. ON when specified input occurs 
OFF after period of time 

Lights can be dimmed to one of 16 
levels. This allows mood control, night 
light, or power conservation opera- 
tion. Text messages of variable size 
can be scheduled as announcements 
or reminders. And the HCS uses less 
than 5 watts (W). 

The processor and clock continue 
to operate during a power failure; 
scheduled events are noted in mem- 
ory. When AC power is restored, the 
HCS restores all modules to the state 
they would be in if power weren't in- 
terrupted. 

The on-time of desired modules, 
usually lights, tracks the sunset. This 
alleviates having to adjust the 
schedule many times per year as the 
sunset changes. Included is a com- 



106 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



mand to compensate sunset times for 
daylight saving. 

The HCS can optionally restore the 
status of all modules every four 
minutes. This is useful in commercial 
applications where a module may be 
turned off by a transient or non-HCS- 
generated command. Restore can 
also be triggered by an input line. 

Modules can be bypassed for a 
selected interval (up to 44 days). This 
can be used for vacations or holidays. 
It also allows an input occurrence to 
lock out specified modules. Clock ac- 
curacy can be adjusted by software to 
within one second per day And, final- 
ly, the entire event schedule can be 
listed to the serial port. The speed of 
the listing can be controlled to allow 
for printing of the schedule. 

The HCS is designed to communi- 
cate in English and not in a program- 
ming language. All control sequences 
are prompted through menus, and 
any input errors simply cause the sys- 
tem to revert back to the status dis- 
play or the option menu. 

The HCS is designed around the 
concept of an 'event." An event has 
four elements: the type of event, the 
device on which the event will 
operate, the trigger that starts the 
event, and the trigger that ends the 
event. The type of event is defined in 
terms of its "driver." These include 
Message Driver, BSR On/Off Driver, 
BSR Cycle Driver, BSR Dimmer Driver, 
Direct Output Driver, and Superkeys. 

The Message Driver displays a mes- 
sage on the terminal. The BSR On/Off 
Driver turns a BSR control module on 
or off. The BSR Cycle Driver causes 
a specified BSR module to cycle on 
and off periodically at a rate deter- 
mined by the user. The BSR Dimmer 
Driver changes the brightness of a 
BSR lamp module. The Direct Output 
Driver sets the output level on the 
eight direct output lines. Superkeys 
are 16 function keys that, when 
selected by a three-button sequence, 
trigger a predefined event sequence 
(such as turning on specific BSR 
modules, displaying particular mes- 
sages, or setting specific outputs). The 
quantity of events is limited only by 

{continued) 



Figure 2: Programming the HCS to turn the attic fan on. 
FRI APR 5 10:09 PM 



1111111 
1234567890123456 

1 BSR ON/OFF A 

2 BSR DIMMER A -- 

3 BSR CYCLER A 

4 BSR ON/OFF B - (When using a terminal, the raised- 

5 BSR ON/OFF C dot graphics character is printed 

6 DIRECT OUT - as a " - " instead) 

7 MESSAGES - 

8 SUPERKEY 

(a space entered on the keyboard brings up the editing menu) 

A REPORT,CREATE,OR DELETE EVENT 

B SET HOUSE CODE C MANUAL ON/OFF 

D MANUAL RESTORE E AUTO RESTORE 

F RESTORE BY INPUT G SET DATE AND TIME 

H CLOCK ACCURACY I TIME FORMAT 

J TRACK SUNSET K DAYLIGHT SAVINGS 

L LIST EVENTS M SET LIST SPEED 

N "TOTAL RESET** O LINES PER SCREEN 

P INPUT STATUS Q HOLD BY INPUT 

R DEFINE SUPERKEY S BYPASS MODULE 

T DELAY EVENT 

U SET EVENT TO EXECUTE ONLY ONCE 

ENTER LETTER OF CHOICE (A-Z)? A 

* MEANS EVENTS ARE SCHEDULED 

1111111 
1234567890123456 

1 BSR ON/OFF A ■■.■■ , ,- ■ ■■ - 

2 BSR DIMMER A - ----- 

3 BSR CYCLER A - 

4 BSR ON/OFF B (No events are 

5 BSR ON/OFF C - ----- presently scheduled) 

6 DIRECT OUT 

7 MESSAGES -- 

8 SUPERKEY 

ENTER DRIVER NUMBER (1-8)? 1 

ENTER MODULE NUMBER (1-16)? 1 

THIS DRIVER/MODULE NOT IN USE 

CREATE OR DELETE EVENT (C/D)? C 
374 CHARACTERS AVAILABLE 

ENTER NAME OF MODULE 

ONE RETURN STARTS NEW LINE 
AND TWO RETURNS ENDS 
?ATTIC FAN 

1 ON AT SPECIFIED TIME 
OFF AT SPECIFIED TIME 

2 ON AT SPECIFIED TIME 

OFF WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 



ON WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 
OFF AT SPECIFIED TIME 



[continued) 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 107 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



By selecting 



different options 
you can program 
the HCS to perform 



specific tasks. 



the available RAM (random-access 
read/write memory). (Even though the 
Superkeys. messages, and outputs are 
not BSR devices, I refer to each of 
their separate events as modules to 
be consistent with BSR terminology} 

The HCS has two display modes: 
status and editing. The status display 
shown in photo 3, is the normal oper- 
ating display of the HCS. At the top 
is the current date and time. Below 
that is an area where any messages 
will be displayed when activated. At 
the bottom is the actual real-time 
status of all output drivers presented 
as an 8-driver by 16-module display 
matrix. If no action has been defined 
for a particular module a raised dot 
is displayed. If an event has been pro- 
grammed for a particular module, a 
"0" indicates that it is currently off; 
a T 1 indicates that it is currently on. 
The display updates in real time as 
the modules change state or the clock 
updates. 

Pressing the space bar displays the 
editing menu (see photo 4). By select- 
ing the different options presented in 
the menu, you can program the HCS 
to perform the specific tasks you wish. 
Controlling the attic fan with two 
thermostatic switches attached to in- 
put lines 1 and 2 respectively is a rel- 
atively simple procedure. Figure 2 
shows what appears on the display 
screen as we program that event. 

The fan will start when input line 1 
goes low (it can be redefined for 
reverse polarity) and will go off when 
line 2 goes low. Perhaps you want to 
know when the fan is on (besides re- 
membering that driver 1 /module 1 is 
the fan and looking at the status dis- 
play), so we'll add a message defined 



4 ON WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 
OFF WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 

5 ON WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 
OFF AFTER PERIOD OF TIME 

ENTER NUMBER OF ON/OFF 
COMBINATION (1-5)? 4 

ENTER INPUT # FOR ON (1-16)? I 

ENTER INPUT # FOR OFF (1-16)? 2 



(Entering the same input # for 
both the ON and OFF trigger 
in Item 4 results in "ON WHILE 
SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS") 



ATTIC FAN 
1 INPUT# 



1 



INPUT# 2 



ENTER INPUT # FOR ON (1-16)? (More inputs can be added to specify 

the same BSR module function; to exit, 
simply enter a return and the status 
display will resume) 

FRI APR 5 10:11 PM 



1111111 
1234567890123456 

1 BSR ON/OFF A 

2 BSR DIMMER A — (Status display now 

3 BSR CYCLER A - shows driver 1 module 

4 BSR ON/OFF B - 1 programmed but 

5 BSR ON/OFF C - inactive) 

6 DIRECT OUT - 

7 MESSAGES ----- 

8 SUPERKEY - - 



Figure 3: Programming the HCS to print a message when the fan is on. 
* MEANS EVENTS ARE SCHEDULED 

1111111 

1234567890123456 

1 BSR ON/OFF A * 

2 BSR DIMMER A - 

3 BSR CYCLER A - — 

4 BSR ON/OFF B — 

5 BSR ON/OFF C — - 

6 DIRECT OUT 

7 MESSAGES 

8 SUPERKEY 

ENTER DRIVER NUMBER (1-8)? 7 
ENTER MODULE NUMBER (1-16)? 1 
THIS DRIVER/MODULE NOT IN USE 
CREATE OR DELETE EVENT (C/D)? C 

1 ON AT SPECIFIED TIME 

OFF AT SPECIFIED TIME ^^ 



108 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



2 ON AT SPECIFIED TIME 

OFF WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 

3 ON WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 
OFF AT SPECIFIED TIME 

4 ON WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 
OFF WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 

5 ON WHEN SPECIFIED INPUT OCCURS 
OFF AFTER PERIOD OF TIME 

ENTER NUMBER OF ON/OFF 
COMBINATION (1-5)? 4 

ENTER INPUT # FOR ON (1-16)? 1 

ENTER INPUT # FOR OFF (1-16)? 2 

502 CHARACTERS AVAILABLE 

ENTER MESSAGE 

ONE RETURN STARTS NEW LINE 
AND TWO RETURNS ENDS 
? 

THE ATTIC FAN IS ON 



1 INPUT# 1 
THE ATTIC FAN IS ON 



INPUT# 2 



ENTER INPUT # FOR ON (1-16)? (just return to exit) 
FRI APRS 10:12 PM 



1111111 
1234567890123456 

1 BSR ON/OFF A - - 

2 BSR DIMMER A — 

3 BSR CYCLER A - - -- 

4 BSR ON/OFF B (The two zeros indicate that the 

5 BSR ON/OFF C modules are defined but OFF) 

6 DIRECT OUT 

7 MESSAGES 0-- - 

8 SUPERKEY 

(If we close the contact on input line #1 , the following happens:) 
FRI APR 5 10:15 PM 
THE ATTIC FAN IS ON 



(This listing is spaced to show 
the full 24-line display) 



1111111 
1234567890123456 

1 BSR ON/OFF A 1 -- 

2 BSR DIMMER A 

3 BSR CYCLER A ----- ---- 

4 BSR ON/OFF B - 

5 BSR ON/OFF C -- 

6 DIRECT OUT 

7 MESSAGES 1 

8 SUPERKEY 



As I use the HCS 
and find certain 
functions or displays 
I want revised, some 
of them may change. 



to trigger from the same events to say 
"the fan is on." 

We can create an event at this point 
by simply typing "A." The display that 
results is shown in figure 3. 

There is a lot more to this control 
system than the simple example in 
figure 3 illustrates. You probably no- 
ticed functions such as Restore, 
Sunset Adjust, Delay, Bypass, and 
Hold in the editing menu. Eventually, 
I'll get to explaining them all and il- 
lustrating their use. 

One Parting Comment 

The HCS is an evolving design. This 
is a three-month project that is being 
written over the course of three 
months. While the hardware design is 
fixed and printed-circuit boards are 
checked out, software is constantly 
evolving and more features are being 
added. Photos of the menus, status 
displays, and other items are taken at 
a specific time in the evolution of the 
software. As I use the HCS and find 
certain functions or displays that I 
want revised, some of them may 
change. 

User-friendliness is one area. In 
reviewing some of the higher-volume 
but lower-functioning control systems 
such as GE's HomeMinder, the em- 
phasis is on graphics and simple user 
interfacing. If you want to control a 
lamp on the HomeMinder, you look 
for the picture of a lamp and manip- 
ulate it on the screen. 

I configured HCS to be a high-level 
controller with much less emphasis 
on pretty graphics. However, many of 
the professional software people who 
have seen HCS believe it would have 

{continued) 



APRIL 1 985 • BYT t 109 



CIRCUIT CELLAR 



a much wider audience if it had some 
"paint-by-numbers" appearance. Con- 
sequently, they plan to support it in- 
dependently A HomeMinder-like 
graphics package is presently being 
written for the IBM PC by third par- 
ties. It will connect to the HCS through 
the terminal I/O port. Hopefully I'll 
have a picture of it in operation by the 
third month. 

While I'll live without Alice-in- 
Wonderland control software 1 was 
bitten by the large-system interface 
bug and decided to take advantage of 
big-system functions. The HCS op- 
tionally includes an upload/download 
capability to the IBM PC (eventually 
for other computers). The complete 
command and control sequence resi- 
dent in the HCS can be uploaded 
serially to the PC for storage on disk. 
A download provision reprograms the 
HCS with that control sequence. 

This storage capability allows the 
user to run the HCS with various con- 
trol sequences loaded from disk. A 
"training" session debugs the se- 
quence and then it is stored on disk 
for later retrieval. Industrial users who 
change program sequences frequent- 
ly are the prime beneficiaries, but new 
tools often produce new applications. 
This function is also accessible via the 
HCS's modem port, and Home Run 
can be completely reprogrammed by 
telephone. (Perhaps you have a vaca- 
tion home. Simply call ahead and let 
the HCS make it a warm and cozy 
arrival.) 

Experimenters and 
OEM Users 

As always, I try to support the com- 
puter experimenter by providing 
sources for many of the components. 
The Circuit Cellar Home Run Control 
System is a single-board design suit- 
able for OEM applications as well. It 
is available in various configurations 
that are all ultimately upgradable to 
the same potential. 

If you plan on building the unit from 
scratch, good luck and take heart. 
Send me a picture of your board, and 
I'll send you a free hexadecimal dump 
(16K bytes) of the control software, 
provided it is for noncommercial 



private use. I'll supply the code on 
two 2764 EPROMs (erasable pro- 
grammable read-only memories) and 
a manual for $32 (postpaid in the 
U.S.). Add $7 for overseas. 

Circuit Cellar Feedback 

This month's feedback begins on 
page 408. 

Next Month 

This is a three-part article. Next 
month, I'll describe the hardware in 
detail, hopefully to the extent that you 
can build your own HCS. The third 
part will emphasize the software and 
demonstrate a typical control appli- 
cation. ■ 

ROBOTIC PROPS (counterclockwise from 
upper left): 1. Cybot Inc., 12510 128th 
Ave. NE, Kirkland, WA 98034. 2. Microbot 
Inc., 453 Ravendale Dr., Mountain View, 
CA 94043. 3. Haikato Robotics Ltd.. 
1580 Lincoln St., Suite 950, Denver CO 
80203. 4. Heath Co., Hilltop Rd., St. 
Joseph. Ml 49085. 5. RB Robot Corp., 
14618 West 6th Ave, Golden. CO 80401. 
6. RSI Inc. (Robotics Systems International 
Ltd.). 9865 West Saanich Rd., RR2. Sydney. 
British Columbia V8L 3S1, Canada. 7. 
Hubotics Inc., 63 52-D Corte Del Abeto, 
Carlsbad, CA 92008. 8. Rhino Robots 
Inc., POB 4010. Champaign. IL 61820. 




SET PROPS: Sturbridce Yankee Work- 
shop Inc., Kettleford Korner. Bedford, NH 
03102. Britches of Concord Inc., 1 
Eagle Square. Concord. NH 03301. Genie 
Vacuum Cleaner Co., 93 South Maple St., 
Manchester. NH 03103. 

Special thanks to Bill Summers and Leo Taylor 
for their software expertise. 



The following items are available from 

The Micromint Inc. 

2 5 Terrace Dr. 

Vernon, CT 06066 

(800) 635-335 5 for orders 

(203) 871-6170 for information 

1 . Home Run HCS— Complete assembled sys- 
tem with enclosure and Apple-compatible 
keyboard HCS01, $589 

2. Home Run HCS-Populated PC board. 
Assembled and tested PC board. No 
enclosure or keyboard HCS02, $429 

3. Home Run HCS— Video-based kit. Includes 
PC board and all components except 
enclosure, keyboard, and serial-interface 
components (IC16. 1C17, IC20, and two 
DB-2 5 connectors) HCSV05, $329 

4. Home Run HCS— Terminal-based kit. 
Includes PC board and all components ex- 
cept video-display processor {IC22. IC2 5, 
and IC26). No keyboard, enclosure, or RF 
modulator HCST06, $289 

5. 8K-byte static-RAM upgrade. Increases 
RAM to 16K bytes HCS20, $3 5 

6. Apple Il-compatible ASCII-encoded key- 
board HCS21, $79 

7. Wall transformer/transmitter module 
(available separately) HCS22, $40 

All kits and assembled units include 
operators manual, power supply with wall 
transformer/transmitter module, and 8K 
bytes of RAM. All units are supplied without 
keyboard encoder chip (not necessary when 
using encoded keyboard, 1C1 8— optionally 
available). All item numbers that list 
enclosures also include backup battery 
holder (6 "C" cells), less batteries. Serial-port 
and video-display-processor upgrades for 
items 3 and 4 and various other components 
are also available. 

Please include $8 for shipping and handling 
in the continental United States, $12 else- 
where. New York residents please include 8 
percent sales tax. Connecticut residents 
please include 7.5 percent sales tax. 

Editor's Note: Steve often refers to previous 
Circuit Cellar articles. Most of these past ar- 
ticles are available in book form from BYTE 
Books, McGraw-Hill Book Company POB 
400, Hightstown, NJ 082 50. 

Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, Volume I covers articles 
in BYTE from September 1977 through 
November 1978. Volume 11 covers December 
1978 through lune 1980. Volume III covers July 
1980 through December 1981. Volume IV 
covers January 1982 through June 1983. 



To receive a complete list of Ciarcia's Cir- 
cuit Cellar project kits, circle 100 on the 
reader-service inquiry card at the back 
of the magazine. 



110 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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Inquiry 184 



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by Colleen Roe Wilson 



Coprocessing 
in Modula-2 



The key to writing 
concurrent programs 
is coordination 



One of the main differences 
between Modula-2 and its 
ancestor, Pascal, is that 
Modula-2 contains specific program- 
ming constructs to permit the devel- 
opment of real-time concurrent pro- 
grams. Thus, you can use Modula-2 to 
write operating systems and other 
low-level software instead of using as- 
sembly language, the language in 
which operating systems are tradi- 
tionally written. 

Concurrency 

Thily concurrent programs execute at 
exactly the same instant in time- 
implying the use of separate com- 
puters. True concurrency occurs in 




distributed processors such as those 
found in control systems and other 
real-time applications. 

When several people use a single 
computer however, concurrency refers 
to interleaved execution. Such pro- 
gramming is at the heart of large time- 
sharing systems, where many users on 
a single computer can run programs 
at the same time. Each person per- 
ceives only the execution of his own 
program, while the operating system 
performs a juggling act partitioning 
the processing power among the 
users. Interleaved execution, then, is 
the seeming concurrency of many 
processes running on one processor. 

Whether we call it true concurren- 
cy or not, the problems inherent in 
writing this type of program are much 
the same. The main problem is tim- 
ing. Concurrent programs must deal 
with nondeterministic events that oc- 
cur at arbitrary times. 

Suppose you have two computers 
connected by some kind of commu- 
nications link. You want to write a pro- 
gram so that two people sitting in two 
different places can exchange mes- 
sages by typing at their respective 
keyboards. Each computer must per- 
form this basic sequence of actions: 

• When a key is struck on computer 
As keyboard, A must retrieve that 
key's value and send it to computer B. 

• When a character arrives at com- 
puter A from computer B, A must 

{continued) 
Colleen Roe Wilson (RR I, Campbelhille, 
Ontario LOP 1 BO, Canada) is a member of 
the technical staff at Allied Canada in 
Mississauga, Ontario. She has a B.S. and an 
M.S. in mathematics and enjoys gourmet 
cooking, gardening, and hiking. 



Inquiry 276 for Dealers. Inquiry 277 for End Users, 



ILLUSTRATED BY LAURA CORNELL 



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in 



COPROCESSING IN MODULA-2 



display it in the next free position on 
its screen. 

Does this sound simple enough? 
Let's take a look at what can happen. 
If you stop and think about how you 
type at a keyboard, it becomes ob- 
vious that you can't expect a fixed 
pattern to the keyboard input and the 
arrival of data on the link. Two users 
might carry on a question-and-answer 
conversation so that only one person 
types at a time. On the other hand, 
two users might argue and type 
simultaneously. Either way, the pro- 
gram needs to know what to do. This 
nondeterministic activity differen- 
tiates real-time programs from typical 
application programs with fixed 
read/write interfaces. You can't predict 
how many reads (input from the 
keyboard) or writes (output to the link) 
the program will have to deal with or 
how they will be ordered. 

The nondeterministic nature of con- 
current programming leads to some 
interesting problems— deadlock or 
"deadly embrace" being the best 
known. Suppose a time-sharing sys- 
tem is trying to run two programs. 
Both programs need exclusive use of 
the computer's tape drive and a par- 
ticular printer to run. The operating 
system starts program A, which ac- 
quires the tape drive. Having used its 
time slot, program A is suspended 
while the operating system starts pro- 
gram B. Program B immediately ac- 
quires the printer and is suspended. 
When A starts up again, it attempts 
to acquire the printer and fails, so its 
execution is suspended until the 
printer is freed. When B starts up 
again, it attempts to acquire the tape 
drive and is likewise suspended until 
the drive is freed. The two programs 
are deadlocked. Neither can proceed 
until the other frees the resource 
needed. 

The key to writing successful con- 
current programs is coordination. You 
must make sure that programs that 
are either cooperatively or indepen- 
dently executing interact with each 
other in a constructive— or at least 
nondestructive— manner. Modula-2 
has programming constructs dealing 



with concurrency 
coordination. 



to aid in this 



COPROCESSES 

Coprocessing is a technique that 
helps you implement coordination 
when writing concurrent programs. 
For example, suppose you write two 
programs to execute as coprocesses— 
Text and Disk. Text prompts you to 
enter text from the keyboard for disk 
storage (it could be an editor). Disk 
is a low-level driver program that in- 
teracts with the disk to read and write 
records. The two coprocesses interact 
as follows: 

• Text prompts you for keyboard in- 
put and puts the characters into a buf- 
fer as it receives them until it finds the 
record terminator. 

• Text signals Disk that a record is 
ready in the buffer and suspends 
execution. 

• Disk retrieves the record and writes 
it to the disk. 

• Disk signals Text that the record has 
been written and suspends its 
execution. 

• Text resumes execution at the point 
of suspension and prompts you for 
more input. 

Thus, Text and Disk coprocess the in- 
formation by passing it back and 
forth. This producer(Text)/consumer 
(Disk) relationship is the classic rela- 
tionship between coprocesses. 

You can expand this concept to in- 
clude more than two processes. Sup- 
pose you want various processes to 
exchange messages during execution. 
They need to be able to send mes- 
sages to other processes and to 
receive the same— a sort of electronic 
interprocess mail scheme. One spe- 
cial process is the postmaster. It 
receives and stores messages and 
then distributes them as requested by 
the designated receiving process. The 
postmaster acts as a coprocess with 
the other processes that can request 
to send or receive messages. When 
sending, the requesting process sus- 
pends execution while the postmaster 
picks up the message in its buffer and 
resumes when the postmaster is 
done. When receiving, the requesting 



process suspends while the post- 
master fills its buffer with the message 
and then continues. 

Writing Coprocesses 
in Modula-2 

Two essential mechanisms are needed 
to implement the mechanics of copro- 
cessing: first, a means of identifying 
and executing a program that estab- 
lishes it as a process; second, a 
method so that two coprocesses can 
signal each other to coordinate their 
activities. Modula-2 has facilities for 
these mechanisms imbedded within 
it. Modula-2 programmers do not 
have to get around the language to 
write coprocesses; the language 
directly supports this kind of pro- 
gramming. 

The most fundamental support of 
coprocesses provided in Modula-2 is 
the data type PROCESS, which can 
be imported from the module SYS- 
TEM. We expect languages to support 
our abstract number systems with 
such data types as REAL and IN- 
TEGER, but this is something new; a 
process materialized in a data type. 
The need for it is obvious: a language 
that manipulates processes must be 
able to refer to them in a concrete 
manner. 

Coprocesses use these PROCESS 
variables to communicate with each 
other. Therefore, when you create a 
coprocess, you must bind it to one of 
these variables. Likewise, when these 
programs pass control to one an- 
other, they must use PROCESS 
variables to indicate their targets. 
Modula-2 contains two procedures 
that provide this control: NEW- 
PROCESS and TRANSFER, both of 
which are imported from the module 
SYSTEM. 

NEWPROCESS, which creates a co- 
process within the system and binds 
it to a PROCESS variable, is called by 

NEWPROCESS(p: PROC,a: 
ADDRESS.s: CARDINAL.VAR c: 
PROCESS); 

In this statement, p is the name of a 
procedure that contains the code you 
want to constitute the process, a is the 

{continued) 



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COPROCESSING IN MODULA-2 



address of a storage area that serves f 
as the working space for the process 
(local data and context are stored in 
it), s is the size of the working space, 
and c is a PROCESS variable that 
NEWPROCESS sets to the value of 
the coprocess it creates. 

TRANSFER is the procedure that 
transfers control from the calling co- 
process to the one called. It is invoked 
by 

TRANSFERER 
thisprocess.coprocess: 
PROCESS); 

When a TRANSFER takes place, the 
calling coprocess is suspended and its 
context (data values, current program 
counter, etc.) saved. When the called 
coprocess executes the reverse 
TRANSFER, the calling program 
resumes execution at the point im- 
mediately following its just-executed 
TRANSFER statement. This is the 
significant difference between proce- 
dural calls and TRANSFERS. Each 
time you call a procedure, execution 
returns to the beginning of the pro- 
gram and local storage is reallocated. 
Coprocesses maintain context be- 
tween TRANSFERS. 

The actual implementation of the 
data type PROCESS and the proce- 
dures NEWPROCESS and TRANS- 
FER varies with each machine and 
compiler. However, you need not be 
concerned with this. The data abstrac- 
tion provided by Modula-2 lets you 
merely manipulate the PROCESS 
variables with these procedures. Your 
interface is constant across machines. 
Contrast this with assembly-language 
programming, where you need signifi- 
cant knowledge of the operating-sys- 
tem internals to manipulate the data 
structures representing processes. 

Coding an Example 

Now that we've established what facil- 
ities exist in Modula-2 to program co- 
processes, let's look at an example. 
Starting at the top of the module def- 
inition of TermHandler (see listing 1), 
you import the needed concurrency 
structures from SYSTEM: the data 
types PROCESS, ADDRESS, and 
WORD, and the procedures NEW- 



Listing I: An example of coprocesses coded in Modula-2. 

MODULE TermHandler; 
FROM SYSTEM IMPORT ADDRESS. PROCESS, NEWPROCESS, TRANSFER, 

WORD. ADR. SIZE; 
FROM SYSIO IMPORT GetChar, PutDisk; 
CONST bufsize = 80. 
nterm = 16; 
CR = 13C; 
TYPE buftype* ARRAY[0..bufsize-1] OF CHAR; 
VAR buffer: buftype; 
nchar: INTEGER; 

wspT: ARRAY[0..nterm-1],[1..200] OF WORD; 
wspD: ARRAY[1..200] OF WORD; 
D.C: PROCESS; 

T: ARRAY[0..nterm-1] OF PROCESS; 
thisterm: INTEGER; 
PROCEDURE Textln; 
VAR newchar: CHAR; 
Status: BOOLEAN; 
localbuf: buftype; 
count: INTEGER; 
BEGIN 
count: = - 1 ; 
LOOP 
GetChar(thisterm, newchar, status); 
IF status THEN 
CASE newchar OF 
CR: nchar: = count; 
buffer: = localbuf; 
TRANSFER(T[thisterm].D): 
count: = - 1 
ELSE 
INC(count); 

localbuf[nchar]: = newchar; 
IF count « buf size - 1 
THEN 

nchar; = count; 
buffer: = localbuf; 
TRANSFER(T[thisterm],D); 
count: = - 1 
END 
END 
END; 

TRANSFER(T[thisterm],C) 
END, 
END Textln; 
PROCEDURE TextToDisk; 
BEGIN 
LOOP 
PutDisk(buffer, nchar); 
TRANSFER(D,T[thisterm]) 
END 
END TextToDisk; 
BEGIN 
NEWPROCESS(TextToDisk,ADR(wspD),SlZE(wspD),D); 

FOR thisterm: = TO nterm - 1 DO 
NEWPROCESS(Textln,ADR(wspT[thisterm]), 

SIZE(wspT[thisterm]),T[thisterm]) 



{continued) 



116 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



COPROCESSING IN MODULA-2 



END; 

thisterrn: = 0; 
LOOP 

TRANSFER(C,T[thisternn]); 

thisterm:=thisterm + 1 MOD nterm 
END 
END TermHandler. 



PROCESS, TRANSFER, ADR, and 
SIZE. ADDRESS and WORD are self- 
explanatory primitive data types, 
ADR is a function that returns the ini- 
tial address of the variable passed to 
it, and SIZE is a function that returns 
that variable's storage allocation size. 
Assume the existence of a module 
named SYSIO, from which you import 
GetChar and PutDisk. In the CONST 
section you define the buffer size (buf- 
size) and the record terminator CR 
(carriage return). In the VAR section 
you define the shared buffer (buffer) 
and the shared character count 
(nchar). In addition, you define work- 
ing spaces for the two coprocesses 
you will create (wspT and wspD). 

Suppose you want to handle key- 
board-to-disk transfers for a number 
of terminals— an order-entry system, 
for example. Listing 1 shows an array 
of processes (T) and working spaces 
(wspT). The procedure GetChar is 
passed a terminal-port number (this- 
term) and returns a status (true means 
new character returned while false 
means the opposite) as well as the 
keyboard character (newchar). If a 
character has arrived since the last 
GetChar call it is returned; otherwise 
the status reports the failure. The rea- 
son will become clear in a moment. 

As the main body of code for Term- 
Handler begins, process D is created, 
followed by the nterm terminal pro- 
cesses. Then the program enters a 
loop continually coprocessing with 
each of the individual terminal 
handlers. Each one manages its own 
character count (count) and buffer 
(localbuf). When a handler detects a 
CR or a full buffer, it moves its own 
buffer and count to the global buffer 
(buffer) and global count (nchar) and 
transfers to process D to dump the 
record. (Although it is more common 
for coprocesses to share pointers to 



variables than actual variables, these 
examples use them to make the code 
more readable.) You can see that if 
GetChar waited for a character to 
arrive— in other words, if it did not use 
the status— a single terminal could 
hold up all the others if it produced 
no input. 

What does coprocessing achieve in 
this example? First, when a specific 
terminal handler issues a TRANSFER 
back to process C its context is saved 
in its workspace. Therefore, the next 
time it is activated, the values of count 
and localbuf are appropriately set. 
This would not be true if you used 
procedural calls instead of co- 
processes. 

Second, because each handler 
maintains its own data structures, the 
overall program is kept fairly simple. 
You don't have to manage an array of 
buffers and counters. Each handler is 
concerned with only a single buffer 
and counter, and the code is recycled 
nterm times. You also gain flexibility. A 
more sophisticated version of Term- 
Handler could associate processing 
priorities with some terminals and 
choose to ignore others. In fact, in a 
coprocessing situation TermHandler 
could create new terminal handlers on 
request (instead of using a fixed 
number) or only transfer to a specific 
handler on certain conditions. 

Conclusion 

Coprocesses cooperatively process 
information by interleaved execution 
on a single computer. You must be 
careful to ensure that processes inter- 
act constructively and Modula-2 auto- 
matically contains the programming 
constructs to aid in this coordination. 
These coprocesses provide a means 
of passing control between programs 
without losing the desired execution 
sequence or the context, a 




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Inquiry 132 APRIL 1985 • BYTE 119 




by James Hawley 



A MILLION-POINT 
GRAPHICS TABLET 



How to build low-cost graphics for the Z-100 



The following is a list of the parts used in JWMM| he need for a graphics 
this project and the price paid for each. This * * tablet is quickly apparent if 

project can be built for less than $180. you try to Jo high-resolu- 

1 KoalaPad $99 00 -™" tJOn drawin S s from a ke ^ 

1 S-100 Proto card'. . . '. . . '. '. . '. . '. ". . 1 5.00 b ? ard Although you can create com- 

2 ADC1001 A/D converter ICs* .... 60.00 P 1 ^ pictures with the control keys and 

2 20-pin sockets 50 cursor, you will soon want a true draw- 

2 14-pin sockets 50 ing machine because of the direc- 

I 16-pin socket. 2 5 tional and speed limitations of key- 

1 74LS20 dual 4 input nand 50 board drawing. 

1 74LS04 hexadecimal inverter 50 T . v nn :+u 7 inn ;„ ^,,1,, ^ ,-^^uia* 

1 7805 + 5-volt regulator 75 The Z f mth . ^Sn^ -K, g P . 

1 ioo^f capacitor 50 computer with 640 by 22 5 pixels in 

l/4-watt resistors: 1.00 three planes (eight colors). The 

2 10k ohm machine devotes 64K bytes to each 

i 8.2k ohm plane and has the ability to create 640 

1 15k ohm by 480 pixels in eight colors. The 

1 33Qohm ZBAS1C graphics commands offer a 

$178.50 quick method of creating custom 

graphics programs. 
* available from: DigHCey Tq ^^ tme hjc creativity you 

Highway 32 South . «. . , c . „ „ 

orTn at? neec l to use a stylus for input. You can 

Pud 677 . , ,. , • . . * 

Thief River Falls, draw with a light pen but it is often 

MN 56701 awkward to use vertically and difficult 

(800) 346-5144 to tell exactly where the pen is point- 

ing on a pixel-by-pixel basis. A graph- 
ics tablet solves these problems. 

There are many methods of inter- 
facing analog input to a microcom- 
puter's bus but it is simplified by 

}ames Hawley (4272 Queens Ave. South, 
Minneapolis, MN 55410) is the president of 
laminar Flow inc. in Minneapolis. He enjoys 
flying gliders and designing computer-graphics 
hardware and software. 



bus-compatible analog-to-digital (A/D) 
converters. The National Semiconduc- 
tor ADC 1001 enables you to interface 
a 10-bit digital (1024-point) signal to 
the Zenith S-100 bus with only two 
support chips. 

The graphics pad described here 
uses Koala Technologies' KoalaPad for 
the analog x, y input that feeds the 
two ADClOOls connected to the S-100 
bus. To modify the KoalaPad, you 
open it by unscrewing the screws on 
the bottom, holding the unit together 
and flipping it over, and then lifting 
the pad away from the circuit board. 
Remove the black and blue wires from 
the bottom of the board and, with 
wire-wrap wire, solder them onto pins 
4 and 9 (respectively) of the chip on 
the lower left side of the circuit board 
(next to resistor number 23). These 
two lines will now carry the 0-3-volt 
analog signal (see photo 1). Tape the 
wires out of the way and gently 
replace the pad. Then put on the 
cover, turn the unit over, and screw it 
back together. The KoalaPad is now 
ready to plug into the empty socket 
on the S-100 card. A brief description 
of the circuit is shown in figure 1 . You 
can use the wire-wrap wire-and-solder 
method to build the board but the 3M 
press-pin method is easier. It allows 
rapid assembly and disassembly. The 
3M socket and insertion tool make up 



120 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



the 3M wiring system, which is sold 
as the Whiz Kit by Ragon Inc. of Min- 
neapolis, Minnesota. Its ease and 
speed justify the high cost of the 
sockets. 

Listing 1 gives you all the program- 
ming necessary to get the x, y values 
you need for drawing or cursor move- 
ment from the circuit board. If you in- 
tend to compile the program, it is a 
good idea to repeat the OUT and INP 
routines and compare the values you 
get. This error checking is helpful 
because the KoalaPad can generate 
some bogus values because of the ex- 
ecution speed of compiled code. 

If the ZBASIC language were 
changed to take full advantage of the 
interlace mode then Zenith would be 
able to offer true high-resolution color 
graphics at the lowest price in the 
industry ■ 



Listing I: This program is all you 
need to access the KoalaPad. 

10 'LISTING #1 

20 OUT 127,0 START CONVERSION 
30 A = INP(127) 'INPORT TOP 8 BITS 
40 B = INP(127) IN BOTTOM 2 BITS 
50 A = A*4:B = B/64:X = A + B '10 BITS 
60 OUT 126,0 'START CONVERSION 
70 A = INP(126) 'INPORT TOP 8 BITS 
80 B = INP(126) 'IN BOTTOM 2 BITS 
90 A = A*4:B = B/64:Y = <A + B)/4 



S-100 




A7 [£T>- 



OUT [4T>- 
INP [46^ 



DATA / 
IN \ 



+8vrr>- 

GNd[50>- 



11 



JP 



+ 5V 



IC1 
74LS04 



10 



18 



17 



16 



15 



14 



13 



12 



11 



r fh 



IC3 
ADC1001 



+ 5V 



20 



20 



19 



10 



10 



IC4 

ADC 1001 



10K 



;iso 

PF 



m 



IC2 

74LS20 



T 



+ 5V 

t 



+ 5V 



10 



BLK 

16 -PIN 

SOCKET 

APPLE 



BLU 



X 



+ 5V 



+ 5V 



7805 



+8V 



'8.3K 



1 >1.53K 

;±^150pF 



1 



Figure I: The 74LS04 inverts address signals to the 74LS20 to create two chip-select 
signals for the two ADClOOls (U3 and U4). \t also inverts the OUT and INP lines 
and sends their signals to UJ and U4 as WR and RD. The clocks on pins 19 and 4 
of the ADClOOls use a resistor capacitor circuit, and reference voltage for the circuit 
comes from resistors across CRD and +5. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 121 



$49 95 










SOMETHING BRAND NEW 



INSTANT DATABASES . . . BECAUSE THAT'S 
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THE TOOLS YOU NEED. 



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even when you're working in 


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• Template Maker (for designing 


• Notepad 


your own databases) 


• Time and Expense Diary 


• DOS Services 


• Programmable Hotkey (You 


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choose the key that gets you 


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databases or your other 


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• Cut and Paste (great for putting 


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letter that combines a chunk of 


• Alarm Clock (including Musical 


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document, and a few notes) 


• To-Do List 





122 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



HE EXCITEMENT IS BACK 

With the Electronic Mailbag of Your Dreams 

ELECTRONIC MAIL THAT TAKES CARE OF ITSELF ... IN THE BACKGROUND 

(While you're running WordStar, Lotus, dBase, a compiler or whatever) 

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j always felt that there was something strange about having to play postman every time a piece of electronic mail was due. 
\ was always a case of loading up a communications package and either waiting for the mail or going out to fetch it. 
Now, we've got it! And you can have it, too. With HOMEBASE, Electronic mail can arrive while you're working in another piece of 
software. Up in the corner of your screen, a signal lets you know that there's incoming mail. You can read it as it comes in, if you 
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When you're sending Electronic Mail, its just as easy. Once you've written and addressed your letter, the rest is done for you, 
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Inquiry 22 



Sidekick is a trademark of Borland Interntlonal. inc Poly Windows is a trademark of Polylron Corp. Spotlight is a trademark of Software Arts. 

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Tables and Pages 
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Instant Databases 








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Cut and Paste 








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llf 



BYTE 



Artificial 
Intelligence 



Communication with Alien Intelligence 
by Marvin bAinsky . 1 26 

The Quest to Understand Thinking 

by Roger Schank and Larry Hunter 143 

The LISP Tutor 

by \ohn R. Anderson and Brian J. Reiser . . 159 

PROUST 

by W. Lewis ]ohnson and Elliot Soloway ... 1 79 

Architectures for AI 

by Michael F. Deering 193 

The LISP Revolution 

by Patrick H. Winston 209 

The Challenge of Open Systems 

by Carl Hewitt 223 

Vision 

by Dana H. Ballard and 

Christopher M. Brown . . 245 

Learning in Parallel Networks 

by Geoffrey E. Hinton 265 

Connections 

by ]erome A. Feldman 277 

Reverse Engineering the Brain 

by John K. Stevens 286 

The Technology of Expert Systems 

by Robert H. Michaelsen. Donald Michie, 

and Albert Boulanger 303 

Inside an Expert System 

by Beverly A. Thompson and 

William A. Thompson 315 



YOU AWAKE ONE MORNING to find your brain has another lobe function- 
ing. Invisible, this auxiliary lobe answers your questions with information 
beyond the realm of your own memory suggests plausible courses of action, 
and asks questions that help bring out relevant facts. You quickly come to 
rely on the new lobe so much that you stop wondering how it works. You 
just use it. This is the dream of artificial intelligence. In this issue of BYTE, 
a group of distinguished authors, including leading researchers, examine the 
state of this challenging field. While the auxiliary lobe is a distant dream, some 
of these articles show that AI has won a place on personal computers. 

Understanding artificial intelligence requires understanding intelligence itself. 
Marvin Minsky of MIT explores the concept of intelligence and considers 
whether we will be able to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence when 
we encounter it. Some of the conceptual structures needed to make com- 
puters perform operations natural to the human mind are covered by Roger 
Schank and Larry Hunter of Yale. 

Computer science is among the first fields to benefit from AI. John Anderson 
and Brian Reiser of Carnegie-Mellon describe their interactive LISP program 
that teaches people to program in LISP, while Yale's Lewis Johnson and Elliot 
Soloway explain the operations of their LISP program that finds nonsyntactic 
bugs in Pascal programs. 

If we are to have powerful AI on personal computers, we must have efficient 
hardware and software. Michael Deering of Schlumberger Research surveys 
some efficient architectures for AI. After noticing the recent flowering of LISP 
on personal computers, MIT's Patrick Winston provides an introduction to the 
language. Carl Hewitt, developer of an early logic programming language, ques- 
tions whether logic programming will be able to develop intelligent systems 
for complex applications in the real world. 

In their article, Dana Ballard and Chris Brown of Rochester University explain 
how the miracle of vision rests on hierarchical representations of information 
as well as on parallel processing. Parallelism is explored further by Geoffrey 
Hinton of Carnegie-Mellon, who presents two theories of how learning could 
occur in brain-like networks. Jerome Feldman of Rochester elaborates on key 
issues in massive parallelism in both natural and artificial intelligence. John 
Stevens of the University of Tbronto takes a bold and intriguing look at the 
possibilities of copying the brain's own circuitry directly He starts with the device 
physics of the brain and goes on to discuss silicon-based designs. 

The methods for building expert systems discussed by Robert Michaelsen, 
Donald Michie, and Albert Boulanger include not only those based on rules 
but also those based on deeper representations of knowledge. Beverly and 
William Thompson explain a rule-based expert system written in Pascal. 

Space limitations prevented the inclusion of Michael Fichtelman's expert 
system in Logo and Phillip Robinson's description of a custom AI chip 
developed at Syracuse University. Look for these articles in forthcoming issues. 

Many of the technical terms used in the context of AI involve subtle varia- 
tions on the traditional computer science definitions. Please consult the 
glossary on page 138 for definitions of several of these terms. 

—Phil Lemmons, Editor in Chief 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 125 




♦ 


* • 

•• 


• 


.• 








1 --^^ 




c 


D 

C 







R 





126 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



ILLUSTRATED BY JAMES ENDICOTT 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



COMMUNICATION 

WITH ALIEN 

INTELLIGENCE 



by Marvin Minsky 



It may not be as difficult as you think 



WHEN FIRST WE MEET those aliens 
in outer space, will we and they be 
able to converse? I believe that, yes, 
we will— provided they are motivated 
to cooperate— because we'll both 
think in similar ways. I propose two 
kinds of arguments for why those 
aliens may think like us, in spite of 
having very different origins. These 
arguments are based on the idea that 
all intelligent problem solvers are sub- 
ject to the same ultimate constraints- 
limitations on space, time, and 
materials. For animals to evolve 
powerful ways to deal with such con- 
straints, they must have ways to repre- 
sent the situations they face, and they 
must have processes for manipulating 
those representations. These two re- 
quirements are: 

Economics: Every intelligence must 
develop symbol systems for repre- 
senting things, causes, and goals, and 
for formulating and remembering the 
procedures it develops for achieving 
those goals. 

Sparseness: Every evolving intelli- 
gence will eventually encounter cer- 
tain very special ideas— e.g., about 



arithmetic, causal reasoning, and 
economics— because these particular 
ideas are very much simpler than 
other ideas with similar uses. 

The economics argument is that the 
power of a mind depends on how it 
manages the resources it can use. The 
concept of thing is indispensable for 
managing the resources of space and 
the substances that fill it. The concept 
of goal is indispensable for managing 
how we use the time we have avail- 
able—both for what we do and what 
we think about. Aliens will use these 
notions too, because they are both 
easy to evolve and because there ap- 
pear to be no easily evolved alter- 
natives for them. 

The sparseness theory tries to make 
this more precise by showing that 
almost any evolutionary search will 
soon find certain schemes that have 
no easily accessible alternatives, that 
is, other different ideas that can serve 
the same purposes. These ideas or 
processes seem to be peculiarly 
isolated in the sense that the only 
things that resemble them are vastly 
more complicated. I will discuss only 



the specific example of arithmetic and 
conjecture that those other concepts 
of objects, causes, and goals have this 
same island-like character. 

Critic: What if those aliens have 
evolved so far beyond us that their 
concerns are unintelligible to us and 
their technologies and conceptions 
have become entirely different from 
ours? 

Then communication may be in- 
feasible. My arguments apply only to 
those stages of mental evolution in 

{continued) 
Artificial-intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky 
is Donner Professor of Science in the Depart- 
ment of Electrical Engineering and Computer 
Science at Massachusetts \nstitute of Tech- 
nology (545 Technology Square, Cambridge, 
MA 02139). Ik the late 1950s, Minsky, 
together with John McCarthy [now at Stan- 
ford), created MIT's AI laboratory, of which 
Minsky was the director for several years. 
Minsky has long been interested in SETI [the 
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and 
participated in the important 1971 conference 
on communication with extraterrestrials, held 
in Soviet Armenia and organized by Carl 
Sagan. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 127 



COMMUNICATION 



A distinctive aspect 
of intelligence is 
the ability to solve 
new, different problems. 



which beings are still concerned with 
surviving, communicating, and ex- 
panding their control of the physical 
world. Beyond that, we may be unable 
to sympathize with what they come 
to regard as important. Yet even then 
we can hope to communicate with the 
mental mechanisms they use to keep 
account of space and time; these 
could remain as sorts of universal 
currency. 

Critic: How can we be sure that things 
like plants and stones or storms and 
streams are not intelligent in other 
ways? 

If you can't say in what respects 
their intelligence is similar, it makes no 
sense to use the same word. They cer- 
tainly don't seem good at solving the 
kinds of problems that challenge our 
intelligence. 

Critic: What's so special about solv- 
ing problems? Please define intelli- 
gence precisely so that we'll know 
what we are discussing. 

It's not one author's place to tell 
other people how to use a word that 
they already understand. Let's just use 
intelligence to mean what people 
usually mean: the ability to solve hard 
problems— like how to build space- 
ships and long-distance communica- 
tion systems. 

Critic: Then please define what a hard 
problem is. For instance, we know that 
human intelligence was involved in 
building the pyramids— yet coral-reef 
animals build things on an even larger 
scale. Should we therefore be able to 
communicate with them? 

No. Humans do indeed solve such 
problems, but it is only an illusion that 
coral-reef animals do. An important 
factor is .speed. No single bird dis- 



covers how to fly: Evolution used a 
trillion bird-years to find out how— yet 
man learned to fly in tens of human- 
years. And while a person might take 
several years to find a way to build a 
structure like an oriole's nest or a 
beaver's dam, no oriole or beaver 
could ever learn to do such things at 
all without exploiting the ancient nest- 
machines their genes construct inside 
their brains. A distinctive aspect of 
what we call intelligence is this ability 
to solve a wide range of new, different 
kinds of problems. This is why it makes 
sense to try to communicate with an 
individual animal that can leam quickly 
how to solve new hard problems. 

What enables us to solve hard prob- 
lems so quickly? Here are some ingre- 
dients that seem to me so essential 
that 1 would expect intelligent aliens 
to use them, too: 

Subgoals—to break hard problems 
into simpler ones 

Subobjects—to make descriptions 
based on parts and relations 
Cause-symbols—to explain and 
understand how things change 
Memories— to accumulate experience 
about similar problems 
Economics— to efficiently allocate 
scarce resources 

Planning— to organize work before fill- 
ing in details 

Self-awareness— to provide for the 
problem solver's own welfare 

Still aren't these only a few of the 
myriads of other possibilities? Why 
can't our aliens do all such things in 
completely alien ways? 1 believe that 
these problem-solving schemes are 
not as arbitrary as they seem. 

The Sparseness Principle 

Why does it seem so obvious to us 
that two and two equal four? Such 
mysteries have long concerned philos- 
ophers—why certain concepts seem 
to come into our minds as though 
they need no prior experience or 
evidence. My answer is that this may 
be due at least in part, to the follow- 
ing computational phenomenon. 

The Sparseness Principle: Whenever 
two relatively simple processes have 



products that are similar, those prod- 
ucts are likely to be completely 
identical. 

Because of this, we can expect cer- 
tain a priori structures to appear, 
almost always, whenever a computa- 
tional system evolves by selection 
from a universe of possible processes, 
The ideas of number and arithmetic 
are examples of this, and my conjec- 
ture is that this may be why different 
people can communicate so perfect- 
ly about such matters, although their 
minds may differ in many other ways. 
This may apply to aliens, too. Let me 
explain the sparseness principle by re- 
counting two anecdotes. One involves 
a mathematical experiment, the other 
a real-life experience. 

A Mathematical Experiment— I 
once set out to explore the behaviors 
of all possible processes— that is, of 
all possible computers and their pro- 
grams. There is an easy way to begin 
that search: you just list all possible 
finite sets of rules, one by one. This 
is easy to do using methods that Alan 
Hiring described in 1936; these are 
what today we call "Hiring machines." 
Naturally, 1 didn't get very far because 
the variety of such processes grows 
exponentially with the number of 
rules in each set. However, with the 
help of my student, Daniel Bobrow, I 
managed to examine the first few 
thousand of such machines— and we 
found that among them there were 
only a few distinct kinds of behaviors. 
Some of them simply stopped with- 
out accomplishing anything. Many of 
the others just erased their input data 
and did nothing else. Most of the re- 
mainder quickly got trapped in circles, 
senselessly repeating the same steps 
over again. There were only a few left 
that did anything interesting at all— 
and these were all essentially the 
same: Each of them performed a 
counting operation that repeatedly in- 
creased by one the length of a string 
of symbols. In honor of their ability 
to do what resembles a fragment of 
simple arithmetic, let's call these A- 
machines. Let's think of this exploration 
as exposing parts of some infinite 

{continued) 



128 BYTE • APRIL 1985 




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| Gold Hill Computers 
163 Harvard Street 
Cambridge, MA 02139 



Bl-85 



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Name 
Title 



Department 



Organization 



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Today's Date 



Type of computer 

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T5 



COMMUNICATION 



"universe of possible computational 
structures," Then this tiny fragment of 
evidence suggests that such a 
universe may look something like 
figure 1. 

The Xs represent those useless pro- 
cesses that scarcely do anything at all. 
while the As represent those little 
counting machines, which in effect are 
all identical. Little processes like 
these, inside our minds, could be 
seeds of our more mature ideas 
about arithmetic. My point is that it 
seems inevitable that somewhere in 
a growing mind some A-machines 
must come to be. 

Now, possibly, there are some other 
really different ways to count. So there 
may appear much later some of what 
we represent as B~machines, which are 
processes that act in ways that are 
similar but not identical to the ways 
A-machines behave. But our experi- 
ment hints that even the simplest 
possible B-machine will be so much 
more complicated that it is unlikely 
any brain would discover one before 
it first found many A-machines. 

I think of this little thought experi- 
ment as resembling an abstract ver- 
sion of those first experiments in 
which Stanley Miller and Harold Urey 
set out to explore with real chemicals 
the simplest combinations of consti- 
tuents. They started with a few ele- 
ments like hydrogen, oxygen, nitro- 
gen, carbon, and phosphorus and 
found that those chemicals react first 
to make simple molecules and then 
go on to form peptides, sugars, 
nucleotides, and whatnot. Of course, 
we would have to wait much, much 
longer before the appearance of 
tigers, woodpeckers, or Andro- 
medans. 

A Real-Life Episode— Once, while 1 
was still a child in school, I heard that 
minus times minus is plus. How strange 
it seemed that negatives could cancel 
out— as though two wrongs could 
make a right, or "this statement lies" 
could be a truth. I wondered if there 
could be something else, still like 
arithmetic but having yet another 
sign. Why not make up some number 
things, I thought, that go not just two 
ways, but three? I searched for days, 



making up new little multiplication 
tables. Alas, each system ended either 
with impossible arithmetic (e.g., with 
one and two the same), with no signs 
at all, or with an extra sign. Eventual- 
ly, I gave up. If I had had the courage 
to persist, as Gauss did. I might have 
discovered the arithmetic of complex 
numbers or, as Pauli did, the arith- 
metic of spin matrices. But no one 
ever finds a three-signed imitation of 
arithmetic because, it seems, it sim- 
ply doesn't exist. 

Try, for example to make a new 
number system that's like the ordinary 
one except that it skips some 
number— say, 4. It just won't work. 
Everything will go wrong. You'll have 
to decide what 2 plus 2 is. If you say 
that this is 5, then 5 will have to be 
an even number, and so also must 7 
and 9. Then, what's 5 plus 5? Is it 8. 
or 9, or 10? You'll find that to make 
the new system at all like arithmetic 
you'll have to change the properties 
of all the other numbers. Then, when 
you're done, you'll find that you have 
changed only those numbers' names 
and not their properties at all. 

Similarly, you could try to make two 
different numbers be the same— say, 
139 and 145. But then, to make sub- 
traction work, you'll have to make 6 
the same as and 4 plus 5 equal to 
3. Suddenly, you'll find that the sum 
of two positive numbers is smaller 
than either of them— and that scarce- 



ly resembles arithmetic at all. (In fact, 
this leads to modular arithmetic, which 
has a certain usefulness in abstract 
mathematics but is worse than use- 
less for keeping track of real things.) 
And so it goes. 

There is just no way to take a single 
number out or put another one in. 
Nor can you change a single product, 
sum, or prime. 

What gives arithmetic this stark and 
singular rigidity? You cannot make the 
smallest hole in it or make it stretch 
or bend the slightest bit. You have to 
take it as it stands, the whole thing, 
all or nothing, unchangeable, because 
it's isolated as an island in that 
universe of processes. That selfsame 
A-machine exists, immutably com- 
plete, as part of every other process 
that can generate an endless chain of 
different things. 

1 sometimes wonder if it's danger- 
ous to make our children dwell so 
long on arithmetic since, when seen 
this way, it leads to such a singularly 
barren world. True, some children find 
in it a universe of different things to 
do. Most children, though, just find it 
dull—a source of endless rote and 
pointless pain; it's like the tedium of 
working clay too cold to mold into any 
other shape. 

From all this, I conclude that any en- 
tity who searches through the sim- 
plest processes will soon find frag- 

[continued] 



X x 
XXX 

Ax x A x 

x x A \ 

xx x x x A 

x x x A x / \ 

x A xx xx/xx \ xx 

X x /x X X XX x /x xxx\ x 
xxAx x xxAxxAx 

X Ax X X X A X XXX XX X / \ xxxx 

XX A XX XXXX XXX XX A X A X X 

X XXXAXXX XXX XXX XXX X / \xx XXX XXX 




Figure I: A universe of possible computational structures. 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 



131 



Inquiry 362 



Pascal and C 

Programmers 



Your programs can 
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MaitwCord VISA* 



COMMUNICATION 



ments that do not merely resemble 
arithmetic but are arithmetic. It is not 
a matter of inventiveness or imagina- 
tion, only a fact about the geography 
of the universe of computation, a 
world far more constrained than that 
of real things. 

Thesis: All processes or formalisms 
that resemble arithmetic are either 
identical to it or else unthinkably com- 
plicated. This is why we can commu- 
nicate perfectly about numbers. 

What has this to do with aliens? 
Only that they too must have evolved 
by searching through some universe 
of possible processes, and any evolu- 
tionary process must first consider 
relatively simple systems and thus 
discover the same isolated islands of 
efficiency. 

Finally, we ought to ask why pro- 
cesses occur that way without some 
similar ones nearby? It is hard to for- 
mulate this precisely, because the 
meaning of similar depends on what 
you want to use it for. One way to ex- 
plain it is to point out that a small set 
of rules can generate a vast world of 
implications and consequences. But 
there is no converse because usually 
a small set of rules can't describe a 
large and complex thing. This is sim- 
ply a matter of arithmetic: There just 
aren't enough small sets of rules to go 
around! And that explains why we 
cannot take some set of rules, use it 
to generate a universe of conse- 
quences, make a few changes in that 
universe, and then describe that end 
result, again in terms of only a few 
rules. Now, that altered universe has 
become one of miracles, not of laws. 
There are not enough small sets of 
rules to produce the effect of con- 
tinuity. 

Causes and Clauses 

An alien mind would probably be en- 
tirely different from ours if how we 
think were just an evolutionary acci- 
dent. And then, communication 
would likely not be feasible. But al- 
though every evolution is composed 
of many accidents, each one tends to 
first try relatively simple ways at every 
stage, Since we're the first on earth to 



develop complex languages, and 
since these languages probably 
employ many relatively simple prin- 
ciples, it is likely that alien species will 
share many of these, I propose this 
in a form so strong that it may seem 
entirely preposterous at first; I believe 
that many aspects of our language/ 
grammar forms may be almost in- 
escapable. 

Why do we say things like "ft soon 
will start to rain?" Why must we always 
postulate some agent-cause even 
when there is no actor on the scene? 
It doesn't matter if we're right or 
wrong; we'll find a cause or imagine 
one. 1 claim we seek some cause for 
every difference, move, or change. 
Sometimes our language syntax 
forces this on us, but I claim it is not 
merely a matter of verbal form; it 
stems from deeper causes in the ways 
we think. My guess is that even before 
our ancestors began to speak, they 
first developed special brain ma- 
chinery for representing objects, dif- 
ferences, and causes, and our lan- 
guage/grammar later reflected these. 
Specifically, I suspect that many of our 
thought processes are based on using 
the following kinds of mental symbol 
representations: 

Object-symbols representing things, 
ideas, or processes— In languages, 
they often correspond to nouns. Our 
minds tend to describe every situa- 
tion, real or mental, in terms of 
separate object-things and the rela- 
tions between them. 
Difference-symbols representing dif- 
ferences between, or changes in, 
objects— In languages, they often cor- 
respond to verbs. When any object 
undergoes a change or two objects 
are compared, the mind ascribes 
some differences to them. 
Cause-symbols— When any difference 
is conceived, the mind finds a cause 
for it, a something that is held respon- 
sible. And we use a clever mental trick 
to represent causes in much the same 
ways that we represent objects. 
Cla use-structures— For describing 
complicated situations, we have a 
trick that lets us treat any expression 

{continued) 



132 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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Inquiry 248 



M>i#7r//v M>«#7/erra 



Martin Marietta Data Systems 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 



133 



COMMUNICATION 



or description, however complicated, 
as though it were a single component 
of another description. In languages, 
this corresponds to using embedded 
phrases and clauses. 

It is that final self-embedding trick 
of representing prior thoughts as 
things that gives our minds their awe- 
some power. For this permits us to re- 
use the same brain machinery over 
and over again, at each step replac- 
ing an entire conceptualization by a 
compact symbol. That way, we can 
build up gigantic structures of ideas 
as easily as our children build great 
bridges and towers from simple 
separate blocks. That way, we can 
build new ideas from old ones— and 
that is what enables us to think. This 
applies to our computers as well. 

This must be why our languages 
also have structures that we can re- 
use: Our thoughts themselves must 
use the same machinery repeatedly. 
That's how our thoughts extend them- 
selves to infinite variety. And. unless 
aliens do that too, they cannot turn 
their thoughts to the prior products 
of their thoughts. Without this trick of 
turning symbols on themselves, you 
can't have general intelligence, 
however excellent your repertoire of 
other skills may be. 

Critic: You might as well argue that the 
aliens will speak English if you claim 
they too use nouns and verbs and 
compound embedded sentences. But 
what if they don't think in terms of ob- 
jects and actions at all? 

1 don't think it's an accident that we 
think in terms of thing and cause. 
Whatever may occur, that form of rep- 
resentation leads us always to wonder 
who or what is responsible. And so. 
this evolutionary trick leads us to 
search to find dependencies that help 
predict— and hence control— not just the 
world outside but also what may hap- 
pen in the mind. Perhaps it's also why 
we all grow up believing in a self: 
perhaps that "I" in "1 just had a good 
idea" stems from that same ma- 
chinery. Because if you are compelled 
to find something to cause the things 
you do, that something needs to have 



a name. You call it "me." I call it 
"you" 

Critic: But what's so great about 
dependencies? Why can't some aliens 
perceive entire scenes as wholes in- 
stead of breaking them down into 
those clumsy parts? Why not, instead, 
see what there really is, holistically— 
a steady flow of flux in space in time, 
instead of arbitrary form-filled mind- 
made fragments of approximations to 
reality? 

It surely is a healthy tendency to yearn 
for better ways to see the world. But 
worshipping as-yet-undiscovered 
transcendental schemes can blind us 
to the power we draw from our usual 
ways of separating things. Each 
animal must pay a corresponding 
price in energy and nourishment for 
each machine it carries in its brain, 
lust as clause structure in language 
lets us focus our entire word machine 
on each part of a description, our con- 
cept of seeing separate things lets us 
factor situations into parts and then 
apply our whole mind machine to 
each part of the problem. Enthusiasts 
of holism have never understood the 
hidden cost a mind would have to pay 
to "see everything at once." We'd 
never be able to see anything clearly 
at all. 

There have been many speculations 
on how brains might use something 
like holograms for memories. But on 
one side there is no evidence for this; 
on the other there are few advantages 
to it. Holograms store no more infor- 
mation than other methods, and com- 
puter scientists know other, better 
ways to add redundancy to memory 
to make it robust and injury resistant. 
It is true that holograms can simplify 
certain kinds of recognitions, for in- 
stance, deciding whether a picture 
contains copies of some specific 
other picture. But that also makes it 
much more difficult to make most 
other kinds of decisions, to say 
whether a picture contains two sub- 
pictures that share some specified 
relationship. In fact, a hologram may 
be almost the worst possible way to 
represent relations among the things 
it represents, because memory and 



learning are useful only when they in- 
form us about relations that are at 
least partially predictable. We do not 
want our memories to give equal 
weights to every arbitrary feature of 
a situation. If a scene contains 50 
features, you don't want to equally 
consider all the quadrillion possible 
subsets of those features. And so we 
need some methods for isolating and 
grouping that can emphasize the 
most usefully predictable subsets. In 
short, without the additional con- 
straints on relations between features, 
which result in the concept of an ob- 
ject, we'd simply never see the same 
thing twice. Then we'd have no way to 
learn from our experience. No knowl- 
edge could accumulate. 

Causes and Goals 

How does having memory help- 
when no two problems are ever quite 
the same in all respects? Our past ex- 
perience would seem to have no 
relevance unless we had some ways 
to see which aspects of the world re- 
main the same, while others change. 
This is why knowledge cannot have 
much use unless expressed in terms 
of relations between predictable fea- 
tures and the actions that we can take. 
But given these it then may become 
possible to predict which actions 
might cause undesirable features to 
disappear. 

To say that "y happened because of 
x" is, in effect, to say that x can help 
you to predict which actions can lead 
to y, It helps to control its environ- 
ment if an animal can find such 
causes— fragments of predictability that 
work better than chance. But such 
predictions aren't useful when too 
many small effects add up. What are 
causes anyway? The very concept of 
a cause involves a certain element of 
style: A causal explanation must be 
brief. Unless an explanation is com- 
pact, we cannot use it to predict. We 
would agree that x is a cause of y if 
we see that y depends much more on 
x than on most other things. But we 
wouldn't call x a cause if it were a 
discourse that carried on and on, 
mentioning everything else in the 

(continued) 



134 BYT! 



APRIL 198S 



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Inquiry 40 

*Contact BASF for warranty details. 



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BASF 

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Inquiry 288 




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FUJI (10) 18 

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IBM (10) 22 

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COMMUNICATION 



whole world and never coming to any 
point. This applies to objects too. 

There can't be any objects, things, or 
causes in worlds where everything 
that happens depends, more or less 
equally, on everything else that 
happens. 

It makes no sense to talk about a 
thing in such a world, because our very 
notion of a thing assumes some con- 
stellation of properties that stays the 
same or changes ways we can predict, 
when other things around it change. 
When you move an object, its location 
changes— but not its color, weight, 
material, size, or shape. How conve- 
nient that our world lets us change a 
thing's place and still leave so many 
other properties unchanged. If this 
were not the case, the number of 
combinations to keep track of would 
grow exponentially with the number 
of features we perceive and we would 
have no sense of what causes things to 
happen. 

To deal with something complicated, 
you must find a way to describe it in 
terms of substructures within which 
the effects of actions tend to be 
localized. Tb know the cause of a 
phenomenon is to know, at least in 
principle, what can change or control 
it without changing everything else. 
This is useful when it enables us to 
change one thing without making 
other things worse. 

For a mind to discover causes in its 
world, it must have sensors that 
detect changes that are predictably 
related to the actions it can take. For- 
tunately, evolution tends automatical- 
ly to select just such matched sets of 
sensors and effectors, because in vir- 
tually any environment an animal's 
survival is enhanced if its actions are 
based on good predictions. So we can 
expect evolutionary processes to ac- 
cumulate mechanisms that reflect the 
causal laws that operate in their en- 
vironments. And it would seem that 
the most powerful methods are those 
that let you make predictions about 
the effects of contemplated action 
chains, that is, the ability to make 
plans. 



Problems seem hard when their 
solutions aren't obvious. The most 
general way we know to solve prob- 
lems is to set up systems that have 
some way to make "progress toward 
a goal." In the late 1950s, A. Newell 
and H. A. Simon worked out a theory 
of what they called the "General Prob- 
lem Solver." This is a theory of how 
to reach a goal by making progress— 
finding actions that can replace each 
problem that has a high-level difficulty by 
other problems, each of which has a 
lower-level difficulty. No one can 
prove that all intelligent problem 
solvers, however alien, must use this 
selfsame principle. But until we find 
another, comparably general idea— 
and none is on our horizon— it is hard 
to imagine how an intelligence could 
evolve without exploiting some such 
idea of goal. 

Reliable Communication 

Before we ask how aliens communi- 
cate, we ought to ask how humans 
can. Is there ever a word that means 
the same to any two of us? Everyone 
must have wondered once, "Could 
two persons have different meanings 
for every word, yet never sense that 
anything is wrong?" What if each thing 
that's green or blue to me is blue and 
green to you? The sparseness theory 
claims that we need have no fear of 
that, at least for technical concepts, 
since one of the two outwardly in- 
distinguishable meanings would prob- 
ably be vastly more complicated than 
the other and would never have been 
conceived in the first place. Sparse- 
ness means we can trust one another. 
We know very little of where that 
idea might lead because we know so 
little about how sparseness isolates 
any particular concept. But the 
general idea does seem to support 
the mathematical and physical intui- 
tions proposed by Hans Freudenthal 
in LINCOS, his book on alien commu- 
nication, perhaps even in regard to 
the miniature models he suggests for 
discussing social and administrative 
subjects. There is one problem 
though: Introspection is a poor guide 
for guessing which of our common- 

{continued} 



136 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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COMMUNICATION 



sense concepts are really simple, 
because many things we find easy to 
do use brain machines whose com- 
plexity we cannot sense. For exam- 
ple, we find it easy to stand on two 
feet, but some aliens might find that 
quite astonishing. 

What other ideas are likely to be 
universal in the sense of being islands 
in that sea of possible ideas? Surely 
the mathematical notions of utility, 
linear approximation, probability, and 
the simplest program-like processes 
are. These could serve to communi- 
cate much about trade and com- 
merce, basic facts of biology, and 
even many principles of mental life— 
e.g., about objects, goals, and mem- 
ories. At some point, though, sparse- 
ness must fail, because things that are 
more complicated will have all kinds 
of variations and alternatives, and 



communication will encounter ob- 
stacles of every sort. 

Therefore 

There is little more that I can say to- 
day with any scientific certitude. 
Tomorrow there could be more, 
perhaps because of soon-to-come 
gains in computational power that 
could let us explore a little further 
into the mysterious ocean of all pos- 
sible simple machines. There we 
might find a few more ideas isolated 
enough to share with other minds. 
Such explorations also might tell us 
more about the origin of life itself by 
showing us the simplest schemes that 
could support the simplest forms of 
evolutionary search. ■ 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ernst, G., and Allen Newell. GPS: A Case 



Study in Generality and Problem Solving. New 
York: Academic Press, 1969. 
Freudenthal, Hans. UNCOS: Design of a 
Language for Cosmic Intercourse. Amsterdam; 
North-Holland. 1960. 
Lenat, Douglas. 'The Nature of Heuristics," 
Artificial Intelligence, vol. 19, 1982. 
TUring, Alan. "On Computable Numbers, 
With an Application to the Entscheidungs- 
problem," Proceedings of the London 
Mathematical Society, vol. 2, 1937; reprinted 
in Martin Davis (ed.), The Undecidable. New 
York: Raven Press, 1965. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
This article is an adapted version of a 
paper by Marvin Minsky in Extraterrestrials: 
Science and Alien Intelligence, edited by 
Edward Regis Jr. and published by Cam- 
bridge University Press. Copyright March 
13, 1984, revised December 10, 1984. The 
book will be available in the summer of 
1985. Reprinted with permission of the 
editor and Cambridge University Press. 



A Glossary 
of Artificial-Intelligence TErms 



And, Or, and Stream Paral- 
lelism: different techniques for im- 
plementing parallel operations, 
based on and, or, and pipelined ex- 
ecution hierarchies. 

Bags: formal mathematical objects 
that differ from sets in that they 
allow duplicate items. 

Blackboard: used in systems 
composed of independent 
modules as a means of communi- 
cation. The blackboard is a com- 
mon area of memory containing 
system-state data that all modules 
can access. 

Frame: a knowledge structure (or 
database) used to describe the at- 
tributes that an object possesses, 
arranged in a "slot and filler" for- 
mat. Each slot and its contents 
carry information about a par- 
ticular aspect of the object. 

Grain Size: when used in conjunc- 
tion with parallel processing, grain 
size refers to the complexity of the 



code chunks allocated to each pro- 
cessor. For example, if processor A 
is assigned to perform an addition 
operation while processor B is 
assigned to perform a sort opera- 
tion, the grain size of the code 
assigned to processor A is smaller 
than that assigned to processor B. 

Heuristic: a technique that im- 
proves the efficiency of a problem- 
solving process, even though its 
use cannot be strictly justified. In 
AI, heuristics are typically used to 
reduce the time required to solve 
extremely complex search prob- 
lems. 

Knowledge Engineer: an AI pro- 
grammer who constructs expert 

systems. 

Predicates and Demons: a predi- 
cate is a type of function that tests 
for some condition involving its 
arguments. A demon is a proce- 
dure that activates automatically in 
response to recognizing a prede- 
fined state. 



Script: a frame-like knowledge 
structure used to represent related 
sequences of events. The slots in 
a script contain information con- 
cerning an event (where the event 
occurs, people involved, objects 
manipulated, etc.), and the events 
are linked in a causal chain. 

Semantic Net: a graph of nodes 
and connecting links; the nodes 
represent objects, and the links 
represent relationships. A family 
tree is a good example of a seman- 
tic net. 

Tagged Memory Architecture: in 

AI applications, tagged memory ar- 
chitectures use part of each mem- 
ory word to convey information 
about the data stored in the re- 
maining bits of that word, includ- 
ing the data type and format. 

Unification: a pattern-matching 
method; the result of a unification 
is the assignment of values to the 
variables of two patterns so that 
both patterns become identical. 



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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



THE QUEST 

TO UNDERSTAND 

THINKING 

by Roger Schank and Larry Hunter 



It begins not with complex issues 
but with the most trivial of processes 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, or AI, 
takes as its subject matter some of the 
most daunting questions of our ex- 
istence. What is the nature of mind? 
What are we doing when we are think- 
ing, feeling, seeing, or understanding? 
Is it possible to comprehend how our 
minds really work? These questions 
have been asked for thousands of 
years, but we've made little tangible 
progress at answering them. 

AI offers a new tool for those pur- 
suing the quest: the computer. As 
anyone who has used one can attest, 
computers often create more prob- 
lems than they solve. But for probing 
the issues of mind and thought, that 
is just what we need. 

The fundamental use of computers 
in helping us understand cognition is 
to provide a testbed for our ideas 
about what the mind does. Theories 
of mind often take the form of pro- 
cess descriptions. For example, a 
theory of question answering might 
claim that people first translate a 
question into an internal representa- 
tion, use that representation as an 
index into memory, translate the re- 
called memory into an appropriate 



form for an answer, and then generate 
the words to communicate it. (This ex- 
ample is offered not as a real theory 
of question answering but as an ex- 
ample of what a process theory of 
mind might look like.) 

Process theories seem to be a good 
way of describing what might go on 
inside the brain. One problem with 
them, however, is that all too often 
what looks like a good description 
really isn't specific enough to make 
the theory clear. "Use the represen- 
tation as an index into memory" isn't 
a good explanation of the processes 
behind remembering a fact. How are 
facts recalled? How is the memory 
organized? What happens when 
memory gets very large? What if a fact 
isn't directly encoded in memory but 
can be inferred from something that 
is? A researcher trying to write a pro- 
gram that embodies the above sim- 
plistic theory would run into all of 
these problems and more. That's why 
we need to write programs. Program- 
ming forces us to be explicit, and be- 
ing explicit forces us to confront the 
problems with our theories. 

Not long ago, AI researchers like 



ourselves focused on what they con- 
sidered to be manifestations of highly 
intelligent behavior; playing chess, 
proving mathematical theorems, solv- 
ing complex logical puzzles, and the 
like. Many AI researchers devoted a 
lot of energy to these projects and 
found powerful computational tech- 
niques for accomplishing such "intel- 
ligent" tasks. But we discovered that 
the techniques we developed are not 
the same ones that people actually 
use to perform these tasks, and we 
have instead begun to concentrate on 
tasks that almost any adult finds 
trivial: using language, showing com- 
mon sense, learning from past expe- 
riences. 

Language 

We began studying these "trivial" 
tasks by trying to write programs that 

[continued) 
Roger Schank is chairman of the computer 
science department at Yale University. Larry 
Hunter is a graduate student in computer 
science at Yale. Both authors can be reached 
at the Yale University Artificial Intelligence 
Laboratory, 10 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven, 
CT 06520. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 143 



THINKING 



People understand 
a great deal more 
than the lexical content 
of an utterance. 



could use English (or other natural 
languages) in a useful way. We wanted 
such programs to be able to under- 
stand the written word well enough to 
summarize it, translate it into another 
language, or answer questions about 
it. We were immediately confronted 
with the fact that people understand 
a great deal more than just the im- 
mediate lexical content of an ut- 
terance. For example, most people 
would agree that the sentence "John 
bought a new car" contains a refer- 
ence to money even though the word 
"money" does not appear in the 
sentence. Any program that under- 
stands that sentence would have to be 
able to answer "Yes" to the question 
"Did John spend money 9 " 

How could a program know that? 
One approach might be to associate 
"money" with the word "bought," 
claiming that "buy" means "trade 
money for." This method uses the 
meanings of the various words in the 
sentence to build up a representation 
of the meaning of the whole sentence 
That is more or less the right ap- 
proach, but it has some problems. For 
one, words are ambiguous, and the in- 
ferences we make about their mean- 
ings can easily be wrong. "Buy," for 
example, doesn't always mean money 
changes hands, as in: ")ohn bought 
Mary's argument." Ambiguity is so 
widespread that any program dealing 
with natural language must have 
powerful methods for handling it. 

Another problem is that often 
underlying meanings do not come 
from the definitions of any particular 
word. Consider the following story: 
"lohn went to a restaurant. He 
ordered a sandwich. The waiter 
brought it quickly, so he left a large 
tip" The meaning of this story ob- 
viously includes the fact that )ohn ate 



the sandwich and paid for it. However, 
those actions are not implicit in any 
particular word in the story. How 
might a computer program infer 
them? It would have to know about 
what goes on in restaurants. A person 
could also conclude that lohn prob- 
ably looked at a menu, that he sat at 
a table, that a cook made the sand- 
wich, and so on. The program needs 
to be able to fill in the unmentioned 
gaps in a text with information about 
the events being described. 

There is a solution to both prob- 
lems: The program must be constant- 
ly generating expectations about what 
will happen next. Ambiguity is rarely 
noticed by human speakers because 
the context makes clear which mean- 
ing is correct. For a program to be 
able to resolve ambiguity it must 
build up a "context" as well. In other 
words, the program must have some 
idea of what will happen next, based 
on what has happened previously and 
what it already knows about these 
kinds of situations. Expectations are 
very helpful in resolving ambiguity; 
the expected sense of an ambiguous 
word is the one that should be as- 
sumed. The expectations set up by 
"The bartender poured scotch on . . ." 
makes it easy to use the proper sense 
of "the rocks" 

Expectations also help fill in the 
gaps in a story They commonly come 
in bunches or packages. When we hear 
about a restaurant, we expect to hear 
about a variety of objects, events, and 
people. There should be a menu, the 
patron should look at the menu, pick 
something, tell the order to a waiter 
or waitress, wait for a while, be served, 
eat the food, have the table cleared, 
get a check, pay the check, leave a tip, 
and depart. As is obvious from this 
example, expectation packages can 
be temporally ordered, which makes 
it possible to infer that "[ohn ate his 
sandwich" in the earlier example. 
When an expectation is satisfied, the 
program can infer that the expecta- 
tions temporally prior to it are prob- 
ably also satisfied. People know about 
common sequences of actions in the 
world and use that knowledge to gen- 
erate expectations. There is no way to 



understand language without know- 
ing something about the subject mat- 
ter under discussion. 

To build programs that test these 
ideas, we had to figure out what kinds 
of expectations exist and specifically 
how they are used. First, we looked 
to human behavior to guide us. Peo- 
ple constantly generate expectations 
at many different levels of specificity 
We have expectations about what syl- 
lable sounds are likely to be heard 
next that help us resolve ambiguous 
sounds into words. We have lexical ex- 
pectations about what words or 
classes of words will come next. We 
have expectations of events that are 
likely to occur. We also have a variety 
of expectations about other things, 
like the kinds of goals that various 
people may have, plans and counter- 
plans involved in pursuing those 
goals, and emotional reactions to 
various events. 

Then we thought about how a pro- 
gram might handle this. In some 
sense, every natural-language parser 
uses expectations. The difference be- 
tween a traditional, strictly syntactic 
parser and a more conceptual parser 
is the source of its expectations. A 
syntactic parser uses only knowledge 
about grammar. A conceptual parser 
uses information from many sources, 
grammatical and otherwise. While a 
traditional parser sees syntactic 
analysis as a preliminary process for 
other analyses, a conceptual parser 
sees syntax as only one of many 
sources of information used simulta- 
neously to understand text. 

Many of the low-level expectations 
of our parsers come from the vocab- 
ulary used to represent meaning. 
Some of our programs have used con- 
ceptual dependency (CD) to represent 
meanings (see reference 1). The basic 
CD form has slots for an action, an ac- 
tor, an object, and a directional com- 
ponent (from or to). Each CD action 
has associated semantic constraints 
on the kinds of entities that can fill its 
slots. For example, the CD action in- 
gest requires that its object be edible 
and its actor be alive. When any word 
that refers to "ingest" appears in a 

{continued} 



144 B YTE • APRIL 1985 






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Inquiry 379 



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What every Apple owner 
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146 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



•^ 



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Inquiry 326 

Quark and Word Juggler are trademarks of Quark Incorporated. Apple is a 
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Ask about our specially- priced educational version. 



[1985J 



t Barbara Kasten 



THINKING 



text, expectations are generated to 
hear about an edible object (general- 
ly after the word meaning "ingest") 
and a living actor (generally before 
"ingest"). Notice that the expectations 
generated are both semantic (predict- 
ing a word or meaning) and syntactic 
(predicting where the word might be 
found). Of course, even the CD action 
may be ambiguous. One way to clear 
up the ambiguity in such cases is to 
generate the expectations from both 
possible meanings and pick the action 
whose expectations are met by the re- 
maining words in the story. This tech- 
nique could be used to clarify the 
meaning of "buy" in the earlier exam- 
ple; "buy" would generate two sets of 
expectations, one predicting a valu- 
able object and the other predicting 
an opinion. When one expectation set 
was satisfied, the program could de- 
activate the other. 

There are many other ways to clear 
up ambiguities. More complex expec- 
tation schemes can provide better in- 
formation. Consider the restaurant 
story above. The sentence The waiter 
brought it quickly, so he left a large 
tip" has an ambiguous pronoun, "he." 
Standard rules for pronoun reference 
fail here; sex and number don't dif- 
ferentiate, and "he" does not refer to 
the most recent agreeing antecedent, 
"waiter." The only way to clarify the 
meaning of this pronoun is by the ex- 
pectation that patrons leave tips for 
servers. You might try associating this 
information with the appropriate 
meaning for the word "tip," but patron 
and server are not just semantic re- 
strictions on slot fillers, lohn might be 
a patron in this episode, but he might 
act as a server in some other situa- 
tion. The patron/server/tip expectation 
and the identification of John as a 
patron must come from a package of 
expectations about restaurants. 

When we began to use packages of 
expectations in programs, we dis- 
covered a few things about packages. 
First, any story will refer to many 
packages, and the packages can relate 
to each other in many different ways. 
Packages can be grouped together 
themselves (date = drive, restaurant, 
drive, movie, drive) or can fill slots in 



some other package (the "pay" slot 
of restaurant might be filled by "wash 
dishes"). They can occur at the same 
time (eating and taking an airplane) or 
be incompatible (driving an auto- 
mobile and taking an airplane). Pack- 
ages can also have word senses as- 
sociated with them. In the restaurant 
package, "tip" is more likely to mean 
"money" than "end point." This kind 
of associated lexicon doesn't solve 
the problem of ambiguity, but it is a 
helpful tool. 

We also ran into some problems 
with packages. How could a program 
figure out which package to use at any 
given time? It is reasonable to add ac- 
tivation conditions to a package that 
specify the situations in which that 
package might be relevant. Early pro- 
grams just looked at each package to 
see if its conditions had been met. As 
the number of packages increased, 
their organization had to improve. We 



needed some way of finding the right 
set of expectations at the right mo- 
ment, without looking at every pack- 
age. As we built programs that used 
packaged expectations and gave 
them real stories (taken verbatim from 
the UP1 newswire), we noticed that 
sometimes expectations failed. These 
failures were often very interesting 
events. We began working on ways to 
determine the difference between a 
failed expectation and an unresolved 
one that should be inferred. 

Another problem was picking what 
was to be a package and what wasn't. 
There are many things about eating at 
home that are like going to a restaurant. 
Do the expectations about eating at 
home come from the same package 
or a totally different one? How about 
eating in different restaurants? We 
needed a theory of how to organize 
and find groups of expectations. 

{continued) 



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APRIL 1985 "BYTE 147 



Inquir> 69 



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148 B YTE • APRIL 1985 





THINKING 



Briefly, we began by looking at lan- 
guage. We wanted to generate a pro- 
gram that would read a few sentences 
and answer questions about them. We 
have found that, in order to do this, 
we need to build expectations about 
the subject matter of the text. Those 
expectations come from many diverse 
sources of knowledge and are bun- 
dled together into packages. We then 
have to consider what kinds of pack- 
ages there are and how we can 
organize and use them. What began 
as a study of language has turned into 
a study of knowledge and knowledge 
organization— in other words, a study 
of memory. 

Memory 

Where do predictions come from^ 
How do we know what to expect 
next? We use relevant previous expe- 
riences to help us understand. New- 
borns can't comprehend restaurant 
stories, and people who have worked 
in restaurants can read more into 
seemingly insignificant events. We en- 
code what we see in terms of what we 
have already experienced. That is why 
two people can see the same event 
and yet understand it very dif- 
ferently—they each bring different 
beliefs and expectations to bear. Our 
ability to understand a situation 
comes from our ability to compare it 
to relevant previous situations. The 
knowledge we gain from experi- 
ence—episodic memory— is the same 
knowledge we use to understand— 
semantic memory. 

How does this relate to our predic- 
tion packages? The first thing we 
noticed was that using packages 
might be an efficient way to re- 
member episodes. Instead of having 
to store every event in an experience, 
a program could just save a pointer 
to the prototype (restaurant, for exam- 
ple) along with those parts of the ex- 
perience that weren't part of the 
package (for example, the patron was 
John, the food was a sandwich, the tip 
was large). Memory need only register 
those parts of an episode that dif- 
ferentiate it from the prototype. Since 
packages contain what we expect in 
a situation, they are effectively pro- 



totypes; hence, they can serve to 
organize memory of events. Our pack- 
ages now have another role to play: 
They should accomplish the functions 
of event memory as well as provide 
the expectations that aid in under- 
standing. 

If packages are to function as mem- 
ory as well as processing structures, 
they have additional requirements. 
First and foremost, a memory system 
must be dynamic. The memory must 
be altered by its experiences. A 
memory system that fails to respond 
to new inputs and learn from its ex- 
periences is not very useful. A 
memory system that produces expec- 
tations must be able to respond to ex- 
pectation failures by reorganizing 
itself to provide better expectations 
in the future. Second, a memory sys- 
tem must be able to find what it 
knows. This may not seem very hard, 
but it is. The task of memory is to take 
a given event and find related events. 
But what constitutes a "related" 
event, and how do we know where to 
look for one? These two goals— re- 
membering and learning— drive our 
theorizing about the structure of 
memory. We need to understand how 
knowledge is structured and how it 
can change. 

We also have a powerful technique 
with which to investigate the structure 
of human memory: reminding. Re- 
minding is a ubiquitous phenom- 
enon; people are constantly re- 
minded of one thing by another. You 
can be reminded of an object, a per- 
son, or a situation. In the course of 
normal conversation, people are often 
reminded of previous events. During 
the mental processing of that conver- 
sation, some memory is activated to 
help understand the new input. The 
fact that one experience reminds us 
of another indicates that we are using 
the same structure to process one as 
to remember the other. By examining 
the process of reminding, we can ex- 
plore the structure of memory. 

Armed with our new conception of 
memory structures, let's return to our 
restaurant example. Suppose that 
when John received the bill, the waiter 

[continued} 




A modem that 

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9m 




© Lockheed-GETEX 1985 




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Inquiry 238 



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I 
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Inquiry 256 




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150 BYTE- APRIL 1985 



THINKING 



Common sense is 
knowing about a lot 
of things and using 
what you know in a 
variety of situations. 



had made an arithmetic error and 
charged him too much. John noticed 
this and complained. The waiter was 
apologetic and not only fixed the 
error but offered )ohn a free dessert. 
John— or any dynamic memory sys- 
tem trying to understand what is 
happening— should record this devia- 
tion from the expected routine If he 
were later to notice a similar error 
while buying auto parts, he might be 
reminded of his experience in the 
restaurant. He might then expect 
compensation from the store to make 
up for the mistake. How can an ex- 
perience in an auto-parts store remind 
you of an experience in a restaurant? 
There must be some memory struc- 
ture that is used to understand both 
experiences. In addition, by storing in- 
formation about expectation failure 
(and its results) in the shared struc- 
ture, we automatically make an appro- 
priate generalization. 

What does this tell us about the 
organization of memory? Surely not 
all the expectations are the same 
across these events; )ohn doesn't ex- 
pect to see a menu or be served a 
lobster dinner in the auto-parts store. 
But some expectations are indeed the 
same: He expects to find out what is 
available, to tell someone what he 
wants, to receive it, to get a bill for 
what he has ordered, and to pay the 
bill, Some major scenes happen in 
one event and not in the other; there 
is no equivalent to being directed to 
a table by a hostess in the auto-parts 
store. Also, the specifics added to the 
generalized scenes are different. For 
example, in an auto-parts store you 
find what you want by looking 
through fat catalogs of numbered 



parts sorted by model and year; in a 
restaurant, you look at the menu. 

We can draw several conclusions 
about memory structures. Packages 
are nested, that is, packages have sub- 
packages. In Al terminology, the pack- 
ages are called MOPs (for memory or- 
ganization packages), and the sub- 
packages, scenes. Scenes are 
shared— most appear in many MOPs. 
Examples of scenes might be pay and 
order. It is important to note here that 
there is no "correct" list of packages. 
The packages that any dynamic mem- 
ory system uses at any particular time 
depend on its own prior experiences. 
Furthermore, a MOP contains infor- 
mation about the specific details of its 
own scenes. These details are called 
colorations: for example, the restaurant 
MOP might color the pay scene by 
specifying the acceptable types of 
payment in a restaurant (cash, credit, 
dishwashing, etc.). 

The ability to share scenes provides 
a mechanism for making useful gen- 
eralizations. When there is an expec- 
tation failure and the source of the ex- 
pectation is part of a shared structure, 
the failure and any new expectations 
based on that failure are stored in that 
structure. When a similar situation oc- 
curs, even in a different package, the 
previous failure comes to mind (is re- 
minded) because it is stored in the 
shared scene. Then it can be used to 
help guide processing. A program 
using this system might learn to count 
its change in the auto-parts store after 
being shortchanged in the restaurant, 
since both use the pay scene. This 
combination of failure-driven learning 
and shared memory structures is 
quite powerful. Expectation failure 
can also be used to build new MOPs 
from old ones by changing the colora- 
tions or the order of scenes (for ex- 
ample, in fast-food restaurants, you 
pay before you eat). 

Many more kinds of memory and 
processing structures are used in our 
Al theories and programs than we can 
describe here, but the basic require- 
ments of a useful memory organiza- 
tion should be clear. (For more infor- 
mation, see references 2 and 3.) What 

[continued) 



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THINKING 



may not be clear is how important 
memory and its organization are to 
nearly all cognitive activity. Getting 
just the right piece of knowledge at 
the right moment from our huge and 
constantly changing memory is not 
only crucial for language understand- 
ing but crucial for exhibiting common 
sense (which is really just knowing 
about a lot of things and being able 
to use what you know in a variety of 
situations), for applying expert knowl- 
edge for writing interesting stories, 
and for accomplishing a host of other 
tasks. Being able to learn from expe- 
rience and apply that knowledge in 
relevant situations is an important 
step toward actual intelligence. 

What Is AI? 

The term "artificial intelligence" has 
been much abused of late, and we 
would like to try to clarify what we 
mean by it. Programs that manifest 
theories of knowledge do interesting, 
sometimes even impressive feats. But 
many programs that are not attempt- 
ing to model cognition also do im- 
pressive things. The public perception 
of AI has focused on the artificial. 
Computers are indeed doing things 
we never imagined machines could 
do. Computer scientists and engineers 
are constantly expanding the useful- 
ness and power of their machines. 
That is important science and engi- 
neering, but it is not AI. AI focuses on 
intelligence, something that remains 
mysterious and elusive. Most good AI 
programs aren't terribly useful, and 
many very useful, "smart" programs 
aren't AI at all. If this distinction were 
understood, we could avoid a lot of 
confusion and disappointment. 

So-called expert systems are a case 
in point. These programs, more ac- 
curately dubbed "rule-based," do not 
attempt to reason the way a human 
expert would. They often do very 
useful tasks, and that's great, but they 
are not model theories of intelligence. 
A human expert is not someone who 
is just following the rules. He has the 
experience to know when he is seeing 
an exceptional case and he can recall 
relevant past cases to help him figure 

[continued) 



152 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 373 




Resource Technology — What's it all about? 

IT'S ABOUT TIME! 

.and Time is relative. In business, time is profitability! 



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husincss, however, the hofflom line i* directly proportionate 
h» the quality of, and the time Consumed by, the tools 
employed - (see digital examples). 




\ 



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THINKING 



out what to do. AI theories of expert 
behavior must describe how an ex- 
pert knows when something doesn't 
fit his general rules and what to do 
about it. AI theories need to account 
for how experts change and add to 
the rules they use, based on the suc- 
cess or failure of those rules. 

Artificial intelligence is a much more 
basic science than is popularly be- 
lieved. Many of our best AI ideas re- 
quire a great deal of work before they 
can become useful applications. And 
when an AI idea is turned into a 
useful system, in some sense it isn't 
AI anymore. The construction of such 
a system requires all kinds of non-AI 
programming effort— to make the idea 
work in a real environment, on real 
computers, in some useful way. Such 
a system is made possible by the AI 
idea, but the program's merit comes 
from its functionality, not its heritage. 
The fact that a program is based on 
an AI idea is no way to judge its func- 
tionality. 

Are there any applications of AI? 
We think so. If we are gaining insights 
into how people think, then our find- 
ings should help people think better. 
Perhaps AI's most important applica- 
tions will not be the programs that we 
write but the newfound ability to 
understand how people think. As we 
find out more about how people read, 
understand, and create, we may be 
able to help them do those things bet- 
ter. Perhaps AI's most promising ap- 
plications are in education— helping 
to teach people how to read, remem- 
ber, and think based on a fundamen- 
tal knowledge of those processes. 

Let's consider the problem of teach- 
ing children— or adults— to read. In 
trying to write programs that can 
read, we have learned a great deal 
about the reading process. Perhaps 
we can transfer some of this into im- 
proved techniques for teaching read- 
ing. Of course, this is not always a 
straightforward task, but we believe it 
is possible. Expectations play a cen- 
tral role in understanding text. As 
children build up expectations about 
words and stories, they become bet- 
ter readers. Language ability is strong- 
ly tied to knowing the content of the 



material, so the books children read 
should relate to what they know. We 
may be able to write better reading 
textbooks by using expectation pack- 
ages that children know about. We 
can write textbooks that encourage 
them to use their knowledge to fill in 
the details behind the text, to make 
inferences. Since AI has focused on 
language for most of its existence, it 
has a lot to contribute to reading 
education. But that's not all AI has to 
offer; its promise extends throughout 
education and beyond. AI should 
eventually provide insights into how 
to learn and remember better, how to 
improve explanatory faculties, and 
even how to extend creativity. 

Artificial intelligence is part of the 
grand attempt to understand thinking. 
We believe it is making important con- 
tributions to that endeavor, and that 
is the goal of our science. The pro- 
grams we write are experiments, not 



results. Our interest is intelligence, not 
artifact. As we make progress, our 
results may prepare the way for the 
automated companions that could 
become an indispensable part of 
everyday life. These will not be our 
real results, though. The real results 
will be a new kind of understanding 
of ourselves, an understanding that is 
ultimately much more valuable than 
any program. ■ 

REFERENCES 

1. Schank, Roger C. Conceptual Information 
Processing. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 
1975. 

2. Schank, Roger C Dynamic Memory: A 
Theory of Reminding and Learning in Computers 
and People. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press, 1982. 

3. Schank, Roger C, and Christopher K. 
Riesbeck. Inside Computer Understanding: Five 
Programs Plus Miniatures. Hillsdale, New 
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 
1981. 



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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 



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10 ea DS/DD. 40T (IBM. H/P) 

100 ea. DS/DD. 40T (IBM. H/P) 

DYSAN. 10 ea SS/DD I Apple etc) 

10 ea. DS/DD 48T(IBM,H/P) 

MAXELL 10 ea. SS/DD.MD1 (Applei 

10 ea SS/DD 3'. (MAC) 

10 ea DS'DD MD2 (IBM) 

10 ea DS/QDHiDens(IBM-AT) $ 77 

MEMOREXJOea.SS-SD 3 . [MAC 

10 ea .DS-OD Hi Dens (IBM-ATI 
VERBATIM, 10eaSS/DDMD5tW)1(Apptei 
10 ea OS/DO MD34 (IBM] 
10 ea. SS/DD 3"? (MAC) 

* GENERIK " DISKETTES * 

Top quality w/jackets no labels 
90 day "No hassle money back guarantee ' 
1 00 ea. 35 Track (Apple. Atari) 
250 ea 35 Track ( Apple Atari i 
1000 ea 35 Track (Apple Atani 
100ea 48 Track (IBM. H/P) 
250 ea 48 Track (IBM H/P) 
1000 ea 48 Track (IBM H Pi 




S 80 
199 
750 

i 95 

► 229 
.829 



MODEMS 



ANCHOR, Signalman Mark XII (IBM) 


LIST [ 
$ 399 j 


OKHOY 
t 259 


HAYES, 2400B External Modem (IBM) 


$899 J 


1699 


Smartmodem 120GB (IBM) 


$ 599 ! 


1409 


Smartcomli Software (IBM) 


$ 149 < 


1 99 


Stack Chronograph (RS-232) 


S 249 ! 


; 189 


Stack Smartmodem 300( RS-232) 


$289 ! 


1219 


Smanmodem1200(AP) 


$699 J 


5 489 


Micromodem he w/Smancom (AP) 


$329 1 


J 239 


KENSINGTON, Modem 1200 (MAC) 


$ 595 ! 


» 3es 


NOVATION, J -Cat 


$ 149 ! 


> 104 


ACCESS 1-2-3. 1200B+CrosstalkXV((IBM) $ 595 J 


i 369 


Apple Cat II 300 B (AP) 


$389 ! 


i 249 


212 Apple Cat, 1200B(AP) 


$ 725 ! 


I 559 


SmartCat Plus w/sottware (MAC) 


$499 J 


I 3/9 


PROMETHEUS ProModem 12006 (IBM) 


$399 ! 


I289 


ProModem 1200 (MAC) 


$549 ! 


I 429 


QUADRAM, Quadmodem Internal (IBM) 


$ 595 ! 


I 425 


Quadmodem External (IBM) 


$695 J 


> 49b 


VENTEL PC Half Card (IBM) 


$549 ! 


► 389 


1200 Plus, External (IBM) 


$499 ! 


I 429 


PC12O0 Internal (IBM) 


$499 J 


t 379 



MONITORS 



LIST 

AMDEK, Color 300 Comp/ Audio $ 349 

Cokx 500 Comp/VCR/ RGB/Audio $525 

Color 600 Hi Res RGB 'Audio $ 599 

Cotor 700 Ultra Hi Res RGB S 749 

Color 710 $ 799 

3O0G 12 Green $179 

3G0G 12 Amber $ 199 

31 OA IT Amoo (IBM | $230 

PRINCETON, HX-12 Hi Res RGB $ 795 

SR 12 Hi Res RGB $799 

Scan Doubter tor SR-12 $ 249 

MAX- 12 Amber (monrxhrrjrne) S 249 

QUADRAM, ArnbercfTome 12 Amber $ 250 

aiadchrome 12' RGB Color $ 695 

Quadchrome II, 14" RGB Color $ 650 

ftjadsoeen ir 968*51 2 w'cabte H. Res $1995 

ZENITH. ZVM122 12 Amber $ 159 

ZVM123, 12" Green $149 

ZVM124 12 Amber $200 

ZVM135. 12' Color S 599 



> 249 
f 395 

!459 
1549 
1599 
1 129 

H49 

i 159 
.495 
1599 
179 
1199 
1165 
J495 
i 450 
$1595 
i 95 
I 89 
I 149 
I 499, 



PRINTERS 



DOT MATRIX: 

LIST 
PRICE 

EPSON, RXM-lOOcps S 269 

RX80-F/T $ 369 

BX100— 100 cps. 136 col. pin & fr $499 

fX80-160cps.80col S699 

FX100-t60cps. 136col $849 

JX80— Color Printer. 160 cps $ 399 

LQ1500-200&67cps $1395 

Tractor Feed for LQ1 500 $ 70 

MANNESMANN TALLY. 

Spin!— 80 col 80 cps $269 

160— 80 col. 160 cps $798 

180— 132 col, 160 cps $1098 

OKIOATA, Okimate 20. Color. Hi Res $ 268 

62A— 80 col 1 20 cps. para S 349 

83A- 132 col. 120 cps. para $749 

84-136 col. 200 cps. para $899 

92— 80 col 160 cps para $499 

93— 136 col 160 cps para S 799 

241 OP-Pacemark, 350cps para $2995 

QUADRAM. Ouadje!, Inkjet Color Pnnier $ 895 

STAR MIC, Gami. 120cps 10 S 499 

Germn. 120cps 15" $ 549 

TOSHIBA, Prop spacing A Hi-res graphics 

1351-192cps(DQ)&lO0cps(LQl S1895 

1340-144cps(DG)&S4cpsaO} $995 

Bi-drectional Tractor Feed $ 195 

TTX. TTXpress portable/ handheld. 4Qcps $ 229 

LETTER QUALITY: 

JUKI. 6300-40 cps para $995 $795 

6100—18 cps para 3 pitch $ 599 $ 439 

TOSHIBA Prop spacing & Hires graphics 

1351-192 cps<DQ)& 100 cps (LQ) $1895 $1375 

l340-144cps(D0)&54cps(LQ) $995 $795 

TTX. 1014— 13 cps. para/ser p&fr 3p $ 499 $ 365 

1114— sane as 1014 w/T&F 2c & prop $ 599 $ 439 

PLOTTERS: 

AMDEK. Amptotll 6 pen 10x14 $1099 $ 899 

PRINTER SUPPLIES: 

Paper, Ribbone, Daisy Wheels 



COHHOY 
PRICE 
CALL 
CALL 
CALL 
CALL 
CALL 
CALL 
CALL 
CALL 

S 219 
$568 
S778 
!1208 
11319 
!i 599 
H729 
!399 
$649 
!H975 
!1795 
S 269 
S419 

f375 
795 
175 
129 



PRINTER INTERFACES 
& BUFFERS 



LIST 

ARBO, l BM • PC to Para Pnnter Cable $ 60 

EPSON, Parallel Interface for LQ1500 S 100 

Serial Interlace Board $ 130 

ASSJMPROC, Mac to Epson Conn l/F $ 89 

MPC, Applei I l/F & Cable for Epson & Gemini $ 95 

OKIDATA, Plug h Pay. Tractors. Otagaph.ea $ 50 

ORANGE MICRO, Grappler Plus lur Apple $ 149 

Serial Grappler $ 119 

Buffered Grappler Plus. 16K S 239 

PRACTICAL. Microbuff In-Line 64K.para $ 349 

Microciif fin- Line 64K,ser $349 
QUADRAM, Microfa/ers full line in STOCK 



S 30 

II 79 
II 105 
li 69 
1 1 59 
II 42 
li 99 
1 1 79 
!l 159 
$259 
$259 
CALL 



CABLES 



ARBO, IBM-PC to Modem Cable $ 31 I 21 

IBM-PC to Para Pnnter Cable $ 60 | 30 

ASTAR, RF Modulator tor TV (Apple) $ 35 | 20 

CURTIS, Monitor Extension Cable (IBM) S 50 I 35 

3-9 Keyboard Extens Cable (IBM | $ 40 I 30 

RCA Monitor Cable $ 15 $ 9 



ACCESSORIES 



50 



CURTIS, Diamond. 6 outlets switched 

Emerald. 6 outlets. 6' cord 

Ruby 6 outlets. 6 cord filter 

Sapphire 3 outlets, wffilter 
EPD. Lemon. 6 outlets/ wall 

Lime 6 outlets/cord 

Orange 6 outtets/corrj 

Peach 3 outlets/wait 

Kiwi. 1 outlet/wall 
INNOVATIVE, Fhp-n-File 10 (disk hotder) 

Flip-n-Fite 50 (disk hoWer) 
KENSINGTON, Masterpiece (IBM) 

System Saver Fan (Apple) 
NETWORX. Wretree 4 outlet w/lilt & surge $ 
PERFECT DATA Head Cleaning Kit $ 

PROD TECH INTL Umnterruptable Power Supply 

200 Warts PC200 tor IBM-PC $ 499 

300 Watts XT300 lor IBM- XT $ 359 

800 Watts AT800 lor IBM-AT 12 lbs 



I 

I 

S 

s 
$ 

$ 90 
$ 140 
$ 98 

$ 7 
S 22 

$ 140 
$ 90 



$ 29 

li 35 
11 52 
11 46 
11 29 
II 45 
li 60 
II 39 
CALL 

!4 
15 
99 
69 
39 
12 

S 39 

$279 

CALL 



. CONROY- 
LAPOINTE 
CREDITCARD 

Send me a ConroyLaPointe 
| credit application form so I 
, can get cash discount prices 



nRDFRINfi I MPn A TPQMQ- **"- T ° ,Z06 ° «* G «*** "*«*< ^ l «*- ®* 972Z3 M ** y«» telephone number, double 

UnUCnmU IPir \J OC I tnmO. check fan figures lw Shipping. Insurance and Handling (SIHj AH items uaoally in stock 
HO C SB Cashiers checks, money orders, fortune 1000 cheeks and government checks honored immediately Peisonal and other companv checks —allow 20 days to 
cleai Prices gfltcl 3% ash « Ctnriy-Ltftkni Cratflt Cvi tiutmt so ADD 3% to above puces for VtSA/MasterCaid-Amencan Express Your cards NOT charged til we 

ship Add SIK CHARGES: U S Mainland ,W ($5 rmnimunn for SttfKted UPS ground, UPS Blue, 6^ ($10 minimum), for US Pustat. APQ or FPO, 6% ($10 minimum) 
Alaska & Canada— Postal Fflrtlgri wders except Canada 18% ($25 mmtmums Momtms by Postal m in foreign cnuntnes 30% ($50 mktfraum) Orders received With 
insufficient StH chatges will be relunded Aft prices, avartabthty and speciftcattons subieci to errors or change without notice, so caif to venty AH goods are new include 
warranty and are guaranteed to work Due to our to* pr*ces and ooi_ assurance that_yoa wii! getnew^ unused products— *LL 3ALCS ARE FINAL. We do not guarantee 



Mmiinun-. ir ' ,t ' 111 fx,[,:,lase MAIL TO: 12060 SW Gar den P lace, Portlan d. OR 97223 



. _ reptacemem 0R8IR0ESR mm 
^tlok " IM emtrlk" in tndtnwk* el igmX Conwrilion 



compatibility Catl before returning goods lor repair 
New York. )E«m»P—" 



i wilt get new. unused products— ALL SALES ARE FINAL. We do not guarantee 
-SAM to 6PW PST MMtiiy thrMfh FrMty. Stter^y 10 it 4. (6AM here is 9 AM in 



^ w-LaPomte, me- All Rights Reserved X V^ * ^Q 




COMPUTER 
SYSTEMS 






— Call tor Details — 
256K IBM - PC 



360K 

Disk Drives 

by CDC 




SANYO »a 

256K. 2 320K Disk Drives 



TfeP* 



Z150, 

256K 2 320K Disk Dnves. 

MS DOS 2 1. 8088 Chip, 2 S/P 



HARD DISKS 



Kits are completely engineered to work with DOS 2 0/2 1 
" Includes Hard Disk. Controller Card and 



Easy to install 

Instructions 

KAMERMAN, External 1 men kit 

Meoaflight 100. Internal 10 meg kit 

Masterflight. 20 meg. tape, surge prot 
MAYNARD, Internal 10 meg kit. (WS1) 
OUAORAM. Quaddrsks Int w control ter 

FulLine 
RANA. External 10 meg w/controller 

Internal 10 meg w/controller 



LIST 
SI 295 
$895 
$3095 
SI 595 



Si 495 
$ 995 



CONWY 
5 
795 
95 
150 

CALL 

?095 
795 



FLOPPY DISK DRIVES 



COC, Limited 30 day warranty Call for quantity prices 



Full Height 
Half Height, 



$149 
$129 



MAYNARD. Controller Card w/para port S 300 f 185 

Controller Card w/senal port $310 $195 

Sandstar Corn Card (accepts 3 modules) $265 $205 

PERFECT OATA, Head Cleaning Kit $ 16 $ 12| 



StxPak Plus, 64K 

SrxPakPlus. 256K. S/PCC+S/W 

SrxPakPlus. 384K. S'WCC+S/W 

Game Port for SixPak 

Preview" Graphics Card w/para. 64K 

Advantage" Multil Bd (or AT 

1/0 Plus II. S/P/CC 

1/0 Plus II. S/P/CC/G 

l/0Plusll.2S/P/CC/G 

MonoGraphRus" P/CC (torLotus) 

PCNei. Starter Kit. PC0O2 

PCNet, Circuit Board. PC001 

ComboPlus Products IN STXK 

MegaRus Products IN STXK 
COMX. 

Econo RAM Plus". 384K to 1 5 meg 
board, S/P/CC/G. Fastrak'"& Spooler 

EconoRAM". lull 384K board 
CURTIS. UNI -I, Monitor tilt /swivel base 

3-9 foot Keyboard Extension Cable 
HA UP PAGE (HCW), 8087 Chip 

8087 Math Pak {Chip & Softw) 

8087 Software Pak 

8087 Macro Pak 
HAYES. Mach il joystick 
HERCULES Color Card w/para 

Mono Graphics Card 
KAMERMAN, External Power Supply 
KENSINGTON, Masterptece" 

PC Saver" Line Cord w/Filter 
KEY TRONIC, KB5151 Std keytjoard 

KB5150 Std keyboard 
KOALA, Speed Key System 

Speed Key Tables w/software 

Koala Pad" w PC Design 

Programmer's Gmde 
MAYNARD, SAND STAR SERIES 

Multrluiction(6iCard 

Memory Card no RAM 

Memory Card 256K 

Floppy Con) Card, accepts 3 modules 

HardOtskl/F Module 

HardDisk Cable 

Serial Port Module 

Para or Clock Cal Module ea 

Game Adapter Module 

Memory Module. OK 

Memory Module 256K 

10 meg Hard Drsk Kit & Con! Card 



$695 
$895 
S 50 

$ ; 

S! 

$215 
$ 265 
$315 

$495 
$1090 
SI 



| 395 
11465 

II 39 

$299 

S 445 

:: 150 

II 165 
S21S 
S 375 
$790 
$365 
CALL 
CALL 



$ 595 
$ 50 
$ 40 
$ 175 
$295 
$ 180 
$245 
$ 45 
$245 
$499 
$395 
$ 140 
$ 50 
$255 
$209 
$ 100 
$200 
$ 150 
$ 15 

S 89 
$ 199 

$495 
S 265 
$499 
$ 30 
$ 95 
$ 59 
S 49 
$ 122 
$422 
$1595 



$395 

$325 

II 39 
II 30 

II 149 
:: 235 
$138 
$195 
II 29 
II 169 
Il 329 
$295 

I 99 

II 35 
:; 195 

$159 

:: 63 
II 139 
II 69 
II 14 

$ 79 

$169 
II 395 
:.205 
$399 
II 27 
II 79 

:; 49 
II 43 
II 99 
li 357 
IS1150 



MICROSOFT Mouse for PC 
System Card 64K 
System Card, 256K 

MOUSE SYSTEMS PC Mouse & Pamt 

PARADISE, Modular Graphics Card 
Parallel or Serial Port, ea 

PERSYST, DEW 
PC/Mono Board, w/para port 
PC/Color Graphics Bd.w/hght pen & l/F 
"" Board" Color Adapter, In res 

PLANTRONICS. 
Color Bd & Colormagic, 16 color w/Para 
Color Bd & Draftsman. 16 color w/Para 

QUADRAM, 

Quadboard 64K. to 384K, S/P/CC/G 
Quadboard. no RAM. expand to 364K 
Ouadboard 256K, to 384 K. S/P/CC 
Quadboard, 384K. S/P/CC/G 
Quadboard II. no RAM. to 256K 
Quadboard II. 64K. to 256K. 2S/CC 
Quadboard II. 256K, 2S/CC 
Quad 512 + 64K w/senal port 
Quad 512 ♦ 256K w/senal port 
Quad 512 + 51 2K w/senal port 
Quadcoky I. board. 4 colors 
Upgrade Quadcolor I toll kit 
Ouadvue, board. Mono. S/P/CC 
Quadchrome Monitor, 12" RGB Color 
Quadcnrorne II Monitor. 14" RGB Color 
Amberchrome Monitor. IT Amber 
Quad 3278 
QuadnelVI 
QuadnetlX 
Quadtink 

TG PRODUCTS Joystick 

TITAN, Accelerator PC (8086+ 128K> 

W1CO, Smartboard Keyboard 



$ 395 $ 245 

$295 $225 

$675 11395 

$ 795 II 495 

$295 $215 

$ 395 II 265 

$ 595 1 1 395 

5 325 $ 265 

S 550 ! i 420 

$ 895 ! i 625 

$295 S195 

$275 $199 

I 345 $ 269 

$795 II 495 

$ 650 I 1 450 

$250 11165 

$1195 11050 

S2295 11545 

$1995 11745 

$495 $385 

$ 45 II 29 

$995 !1750 

$ 400 $ 279 



• * FOR YOUR PC-JR • • 



LIST 

PRICE PWCE 

KEY TRONIC, KB5151 Jr Keyboard $255 $ 195 

KOALA, Touch Tablet for Jr $125 !! 75 

MOUSE SYSTEMS, Mouse for Jr $195 11125 

MICROSOFT 128K Booster w/Mouse $495 ! 1 329 

Serial Mouse $ 195 II 139 

QUADRAM, Quadmemtr<128K-512K.P/CC> $ 275 ! i 215 

Quadjr Expansion Chassis $ 695 S 540 

TECMAR, Jr Captain $395 $ 345 



$29 



9 Each, 4164 chips 

90 Day Warranty by us 



PRICES ARE 
DROPPING, 
SO CALL' 



• ComX • 
EconoRAM Plus 



% 



% 



$395 

384K Multifunction RAM Board 
expandable to 1.5 Megabyte 

Works like AST SocPakP)us T ' r wrtti 

capacity for up to 1 5 meg. game port. 

Fastrak™ RAM Disk and Spooler Software 

EconoRAM™ 384K 

Single Function Board 



$325 



WrthFastrak" and Spotter 

FuHy Compattote, 1 Year United Warranty, 

Works on DOS 1 1.2 0or2 1 

Pnces and availability subject to change Call 



SOFTWARE FOR YOUR IBM-PC, XT, AT or JR 



BUSINESS 



APPUED SOFTWARE, VersaForm 
ASHTON-TATE, Framework 

dBase III 

dBase II, (req PC-DOS & 128K) 

dBase II to III upgrade 
ATI, Training Programs— Large Inventory 
BPI. Job Cost Accounting 

Genl Acctg. Afl. AP or PR, each 
BRODERBUND, Bank St Wnter(PC or Jr) 
CDEX, Training Programs— Large Inventory 
CONTINENTAL, Ultrafile (PC) 

Tax Advantage (PC or Jr) 

FCM (Filing. Cataloging, Mailing)(PC) 

Property Management (PC) 
DOW JONES, Investment Evaluator 

Market Manager Plus 

Market Analyzer 

Market Microscope 

Spreadsheet 
FOXAGELLER, dlltil <DOSorCPfM86) 

Quckcode or dGraph. each 
HARVARD, Total Project Manager 

Harvard Project Manager 
HAYDEN, Pe Wnter 

Pie Speller 
HOWARDSOFT, Tax Preparer lor 84 

Heal Estate Analyzer 
HUMAN EDGE, Mmd Prober (PC or Jr) 

Communications Edge (PC) 

Sates Edge 

Management Edge 

Negotiation Edge 
IUS, Easy Writer II System 

Easy Speller II 

GL AR AP. 0E or INV. each 
KENSINGTON, Easy Link Mail Manager 
UFETREE, Vohswnter Deluxe 

Volkswnter 



LIST 
PRICE 
$389 
$695 
$695 
$495 
$200 
$ 75 
$795 
$ 595 
$ 80 
$ 70 
$ 195 
$ 70 
$125 
$495 
$ 139 
$300 
$350 
$350 
$249 
$ 99 
$295 
$495 
$395 
$200 
$ 50 
$ 295 
$250 
$ 50 
S 195 
$250 
$250 
$295 
$ 350 
$ 85 
$ 595 
S 95 
$395 
$195 



CONROY 
PRICE 
$249 
!i 345 
S360 
S289 
!i 119 
II 50 
!!495 
Ji 375 
II 50 
II 45 
II 125 
!i 45 
J I 75 
!i 295 
II 99 
M59 
J1219 
II 219 
11159 
II 65 
$165 

I (SIS 

I 239 

11125 
:: 30 
::195 
:; 170 

II 32 
S119 
1 1 159 
$159 
$185 
$250 
II 125 
S375 
II 59 
!. 159 
$105 



BUSINESS 



LIST 

PRICE 

LIVING VIDEOTEX* Thmk Tank $ 195 

LOTUS, 1-2-3 $ 495 

Symphony $ 695 

MDBS, Knowledgeman $ 500 

MECA, Managing Your Money $ 195 

MICROPRO, WordStar" (PC) $ 350 

WordStar'" (Jr) $ 195 

WordStar 2000 $ 495 

WordStar 2000 Plus $ 595 

WordStar Professional Plus $ 695 

WordStar Professional. 4 Pak | 495 

MailMerge. SpeJIStar or Starlndex, ea $ 99 

Preoptions Pak ( MM /SS/SI ) $ 1 95 

InfoStar Plus (+ Startost) $ 595 

Correct Star $ 145 

MICRORIM, RBase Senes 4000 $ 495 

Extended Report Wnter $ 150 

RBase Clout $ 195 

MICROSOFT Spell $ 50 

Multiplan(PCorJr) $195 

Chart or Protect each $ 250 

Word $ 375 

Word with Mouse $ 475 

MONOGRAM, Dollars & $ense w/Forecast $ 180 

M ULTIMATE, Multimate Ver 4 $ 495 

OPEN SYS GL AR.AP.PR.INV or PO.ea $ 695 

PEACHTREE, Back to Basics GL $ 295 

PeachPak $395 

Peach Text 5000 $ 395 

QUADRAM, Tax Strategy $ 395 

investment Strategy $ 395 

QUE, Using 1-2-3 $ 15 

12-3 lor Business $ 15 

Using Symphony $ 20 

SAMNA, Word Plus $ 295 

SATELLITE, WordPerfect (PC) $ 495 

WordPerfect (Jr) $ 69 

SOFTW ARTS, TK Sotver(specif DOS) $ 399 

SOFTWARE INTL, Open Access $695 



PRICE 
$105 
S309 
S465 
S300 
II 125 

:; 189 
:;115 

S295 
I.325 
S395 
S265 
II 54 
M05 
S315 
II 77 
:269 
II 95 
M25 
II 32 

I 125 
M59 
I.235 
S 289 

II 110 
$295 
$420 
II 175 
$225 

225 
$295 
$295 
S 12 
II 12 
:: 15 
195 
235 
!i 49 
S269 
$395 



BUSINESS 



SOFTWARE PUBL, PFS Report 

PFSFile 

PFS Write 

PFS Graph 

PFS Ran 

PFS: Proof or PFS: Access, each 
SORCIM, SuperCalc III 
STONEWARE, Advanced DB Master 
THORN /EMI, Perfect Writer (PC) 

Perfect Combo (Wnter & Speller) (PC) 

Perfect Combo (Jr) (Write/ Spell/Thesaus 
VISICORP.VisiCalc4 
WARNER. Desk Organizer (PC or Jr) 



LIST 
PRICE 
$ 125 
$ 140 
$ 140 
$ 140 
$ 140 
$ 95 
$395 
$595 
$349 

$ 139 
$250 
$ 195 



PRICE 
$ 79 
II 89 
II 89 
II 89 
II 69 
II 59 
S245 
:i 395 
S179 
11199 
II 89 
! I 159 
II 125 



UTILITIES 



BORLAND, Sidekick (PC or Jr) $ 55 

Sidekick (Copabte) (PC or Jr) $ 85 

Turbo Pascal (PC or Jr) $ 55 

Toolbox (PC) $ 55 

CENTRAL POINT Copy II PC $ 40 

COMX, Fastrak'". RAM/Disk emulator & pnnter spc 

any PC/DOS or RAM Card Menu Driven $ 100 

DIGITAL RES., CP/M-86™ (PC/XT) $ 80 

C BASIC 86™ (CP/M-86) $200 

C8ASIC CocnpiterfCP/M-Se or PCD0S. ea) $ 600 

Concurrent CP/M-86™ w/wmdows $ 835 

PL/1 (PC DOS) $ 750 

Speed Prog Pkg (CP/M-86) $ 200 

DR LOGO-86 (CP/M-86) $100 

EPYX, In Stock 

FUNK SOFTWARE, Sideways $ 60 

HAYES. Smartcom II ( Data Comm | $ 1 49 

U FEBO AT Lattice C $500 

MICROSTUF, Crosstak XVI (PC or Jr) $ 195 

MICROSOFT Macro Assembler $ 100 

BASCCompler $ 395 

Busress BASIC Compiler $ 600 

CCompir $ 395 

COBOL Conptar S 700 

FORTRAN Compier $ 350 

PASCAL Compder $ 300 



S 35 

$ 55 
S 35 
$ 35 
$ 30 

jter For 
II 59 
II 39 
II 135 
S395 
$225 
S495 
II 135 
II 69 
CALL 
II 40 
II 99 
S295 
II 129 
II ~ 
$259 
$300 
!. 259 
II 459 
II 229 
II 199 



UTILITIES 



LIST CONROY 

PRICE PRICE 

MOUSE SYSTEMS, PC Paint $ 99 $ 69 

NORTON, Utilities ( 1 A pm/ns) New Version $ 1 00 $ 65 

OPEN SYSTEMS, BASIC Interpreter $195 $130 

ROSESOFT, Prokey $ 130 $ 79 

WESTERN UNION. Easy Link Mail Mngr $ 95 $ 



HOME & EDUCATIONAL 

ARMONK, Executive Suite 
BPI, Personal Accounting 
CONTINENTAL Home Accountant (Jr) 

Home Accountant Plus (PC) 
DOW JONES, Home Budget 
KOALA, Graphics Exhibitor (Jr) 
MONOGRAM, Dollars & $ense w/forecast $ 165 
SCARBOROUGH, Master Type! PC or Jr. $ 50 

Your Persona) Net Worth $ 100 

SIMON & SCHUSTER, Typing Tutor! 1 1 $ 50 



$ 40 
$ 99 
$ 75 
$ 150 
$ 139 
$ 40 



PLUS: BPI, CBS COMPREHENSIVE, DAVIDSON. 
HARCOURT PBL CORP, 



RECREATIONAL 



BLUECHIP, Millionaire. Barron Tycoon, ea S 
BRODERBUND, Large Inventory In Stock 
ELECTRONrC ARTS, Large trwiwy hi Slock 
HAYDEN, Sargon III (Chess) $ 

INFOCOM, Large Inventory In Stock 
M I C R OSOFT Flight Sinulator ( PC or Jr) $ 
ORIGIN, Ultima III (PC or Jr) $ 

PROFESSIONAL Tnvia Fever (PCor Jr) $ 
SPECTRUM HOLOBYTE, Gato $ 

SPINNAKER, President's Choice, Amazon. 

Fahrenheit Rendevouz Dragon, each $ 

SUB LOGIC, Night Mission Prtall $ 



$ 39 

CALL 
CALL 
$ 34 
CALL 
$ 33 
S 39 
I 25 
$ 25 

$ 25 

$ 27 



CASH-n-CARRY COMPUTER STORES, INC. 

Retail Sales only Call stores for local hours. 
SAN FRANCISCO — 550 Washington Street (at Mont- 
gomery, opposite the Pyramid). Interstate 80, to Highway 
480, take Washington Street Exit. CALL (415) 982-6212. 
PORTLAND, OREGON - At Park 217. Tigard at intersec- 
tion of Highways 217 and 99W. CALL (503) 620-5595. 
SEATTLE, WASH. - 3540 128th Ave. SE, Beflevue 98006. 
In (oehmann's Plaza near Factoria Square, SE of Highway 
405 & 90 and at SE 36th and Richards. CALL 641-4736. 



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Nobody does it better. Nobody can. 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



THE 
LISP TUTOR 

by John R. Anderson and Brian J. Reiser 

It approaches the effectiveness 
of a human tutor 



FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS, we have 
been studying how students learn 
mathematical logical, and program- 
ming skills. We have reached the point 
where we can develop computer- 
based tutors for such domains. This 
article discusses our work on a LISP 
tutor. LISP is one of the main pro- 
gramming languages of artificial intel- 
ligence (AI) and has gained impor- 
tance with the rising prominence of 
AI. 

Universities like ours. Carnegie- 
Mellon University (CMU), are seeing 
a rapidly increasing demand for 
courses in LISP. Many students here 
learn it as their first programming 
language. But LISP is quite difficult 
because of its symbolic nature and its 
use of recursion and because of the 
need to learn abstract AI program- 
ming techniques. We see a remark- 
able range of mastery from courses 
designed to teach LISP. Some stu- 
dents find that a single course serves 
as their entry into the world of AI; 
others leave feeling they have learned 
nothing. 

Studies of students learning such 
cognitive skills have revealed that 
private tutoring appears to be much 
more effective than conventional 



classroom instruction. Classroom 
learning involves listening to lectures, 
reading texts, and working alone on 
homework problems. Private tutoring 
provides the student with an experi- 
enced person to guide his reading 
and problem solving. In a comparison 
involving LISP, we found that students 
with private human tutors needed 
only 11 hours to learn as much as 
classroom students learned in 43 
hours. In both situations most of the 
time was spent actually trying to write 
LISP programs rather than reading or 
reviewing the instruction. The major 
role of the tutor is to make the prob- 
lem-solving episodes more effective 
learning experiences. 

Educational psychologists have ob- 
served that private tutoring is an ad- 
vantage with many different types of 
material. One study (see reference 1) 
compared students who spent the 
same amount of time learning— some 
with private tutors and some in the 
classroom— for two different subjects, 
probability and cartography. Ninety- 
eight percent of the tutored students 
did better on performance tests than 
the average classroom student did. In- 
terestingly the major benefit occurred 
with the poorer students. There was 



relatively little advantage of private 
tutoring for the best students. 

Our goal has been to develop a 
computer-based tutor that is as effec- 
tive in teaching LISP as a human tutor. 
GREATERP (Goal-Restricted Environ- 
ment for Tlitoring and Educational Re- 
search on Programming) is an attempt 
to combine artificial-intelligence tech- 
nology and a psychological theory of 
skill acquisition into an effective 
teaching device. This tutor is itself a 
large LISP program that runs under 
Franz LISP on VAXes. We have already 
begun field testing this tutor in CMU 
classrooms and have seen it lead col- 
lege students to faster, more effective 
learning of LISP programming. In this 
article, we discuss how the tutor 
works, why it is effective, and the pros- 
pects for moving a version of it to per- 
sonal computers. 

GREATERP is only one of the tutors 

{continued) 
}ohn R. Anderson is a professor of psychology 
and computer science at Carnegie-Mellon 
University. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford 
University. Brian ]. Reiser holds a Ph.D. from 
Yale University and is doing postdoctoral 
research at CMU. Write to them at Carnegie- 
Mellon University, Department of Psychology 
Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 159 



LISP TUTOR 



that we have developed at Carnegie- 
Mellon. The Advanced Computer 
Tlitoring Project at CMU currently has 
tutors under development for high- 
school algebra and geometry, and we 
have plans to create tutors for 
calculus and other programming lan- 
guages such as Pascal and Prolog. 
The LISP tutor provides an example 
of our approach in bringing AI tech- 
niques into educational-software 
development. 

Intelligent Tutoring 

These tutoring projects are examples 
of a particularly promising approach 
to educational software called intel- 
ligent tutoring (see reference 2). Such 
systems differ from other AI ap- 
proaches to education by their at- 
tempt to provide effective instruction 
in problem solving the way a human 
tutor does. 

There are a number of components 
typically found in an intelligent tutor- 
ing system. First, there is a domain ex- 
pert, which can actually solve the prob- 
lems. (GREATERP contains a system 
that can write LISP functions from 
problem specifications.) Second, 
there is a bug catalog, which contains 
all the possible deviations a particular 
student can make from the ideal ex- 
pert behavior. Third, there is a tutor- 
ing module, which constitutes an expert 
system for instruction. It is based on 
three sets of principles: one for deter- 
mining from a student's behavior 
what he knows and what confusions 
or bugs he has, another for deciding 
when to interrupt him in the problem- 
solving process and what to say and 
a third to figure out what problems a 
student should do and when he 
should advance to new material. 
Typically, these decisions are based 
on an internal model that the tutor 
keeps of the student's knowledge and 
difficulties so far, enabling it to tailor 
its instruction to each individual 
student. 

Finally, the tutoring system must 
contain an interface for communicat- 
ing with the student. Its construction 
requires human-engineering decisions 
concerning how to present informa- 
tion understandably, how to query the 



student, how the student should enter 
answers, and what information should 
be maintained on the screen. 

Until recently, intelligent tutoring 
was a topic for advanced research but 
didn't seem to offer a viable method 
for delivering educational software 
This situation has changed for two 
reasons. First, an increasing expertise 
in cognitive psychology and artificial 
intelligence allows us to build such 
tutors much more efficiently and 
rapidly. For example, we can develop 
lesson material on our LISP tutor at 
a faster rate than that estimated for 
conventional educational software 
(200 hours per hour of instruction). 
Second, while an intelligent tutor re- 
quires a larger, faster computer, hard- 
ware costs are dropping to where it 
is becoming cost-effective to purchase 
the equipment required. 

Design of the LISP Tutor 

The goal underlying our design of the 
LISP tutor is simple: A student should 
be able to work on a problem in a 
"friendly" environment, as if he were 
using a smart, structured editor. How- 
ever, whenever he makes a planning 
or coding error or asks for help, the 
tutor should provide helpful informa- 
tion that guides the student back to 
a correct path to the solution. In ad- 
dition, we wanted our tutoring en- 
vironment to represent the concep- 
tual structure of programming prob- 
lems better than a simple screen 
editor. 

In order to monitor a student's 
progress and discover and instruct 
about errors, the tutor must be able 
to solve the problems the student is 
working on. Therefore, the first com- 
ponent in the LISP tutor is the ideal 
model, a simulation of the program- 
ming knowledge ideal students use in 
solving problems. This ideal model is 
based on a detailed theory of how 
students learn to program (see refer- 
ence 3). 

We used GRAPES (Goal-Restricted 
Production System, see reference 4) 
to represent the rules programmers 
have for solving problems. Each prob- 
lem-solving rule is represented in the 
system as a production rule. Each pro- 



duction rule contains an IF part, which 
is a set of conditions used to deter- 
mine if the rule applies, and a THEN 
part, which specifies what to do in 
that situation. The following are 
English versions of two of the hun- 
dreds of GRAPES production rules 
known by the tutor: 

IF the goal is to combine LIST1 
and LIST2 into a single list 

THEN use the function APPEND and 
set as subgoals to code LIST1 
and LIST2 

IF the goal is to check that a 
recursive call to a function will 
terminate and the recursive 
call is in the context of a MAP 
function 

THEN set as a subgoal to establish 
that the list provided to the 
MAP function will always 
become NIL after some 
number of recursive calls 

The first is a straightforward produc- 
tion rule about the use of the LISP 
function APPEND to make one list 
from two other lists. The second is a 
rather esoteric production rule that an 
advanced programmer might have. 
When the ideal model codes a LISP 
function, it applies many production 
rules like these to plan and then write 
the code. It also contains a large set 
of buggy rules that represent mis- 
conceptions novice programmers 
often develop during learning. 

The ideal model represents the 
knowledge we want the student to ac- 
quire. But the tutor must also repre- 
sent what he currently knows or does 
not know and his approach to each 
particular problem. The tutor follows 
the student as he types in his code, 
symbol by symbol, and tries to figure 
out what correct or buggy production 
rule would have led to that input. If 
the rule found is a correct one, then 
the tutor stays silent and waits for fur- 
ther input. If, on the other hand, the 
input is in error, the tutor interrupts 
with advice. Thus, as long as the stu- 
dent follows a path leading to a cor- 
rect solution, the tutor stays in the 
background. 

{continued) 



160 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Put your blue box 
out to pasture. 



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You get performance as well as flexibility 
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ASM 86 assembler running under ACCESS on 
an IBM PC AT runs 4.7 times as fast as the 
assembler on a hard-disk based Series III 
and an incredible eleven times faster than a 




floppy-disk based Intel system. The ASM 86 
assembler we tested under ACCESS even 
ran 1.53 times faster than a VAX 11/782 
running competing cross-software. 

Genesis Is Easier to Use. 

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Telex: 4998093 GENMSUI 

Inquiry 165 




f 









. ^I^^^^^H 






— — 


—-as 






■ 


■.•>.* * *Z# ■* 



LISP TUTOR 



The LISP tutor works 
through the algorithm 
step by step. 



The LISP tutor is designed to pro- 
vide as much guidance as necessary. 
When it finds that the student is hav- 
ing difficulty coding a problem, it 
takes him from "coding mode" into 
"planning mode"; that is, the tutor 
works through the algorithm with the 
student, step by step, using an exam- 
ple. After the algorithm is con- 
structed, the student can return to 
coding, presumably with a better idea 
of what he should do to get his code 
to work properly. 

We have designed this tutor with a 
strong commitment to immediate 
feedback. As soon as the student 
makes a mistake, the tutor responds 
with an appropriate diagnostic mes- 
sage. Because a student can write his 
code a small piece at a time, the feed- 
back appears as soon as one item is 
wrong. By contrast, in the standard 
learning situation a student only 
receives feedback after he codes the 
entire function— or set of functions— 
and tries to run it. There is con- 
siderable psychological evidence that 
humans learn better with immediate 
feedback. 

The tutor also provides guidance by 
hinting toward the correct solution if 
the student is having difficulty. These 
hints take the form of queries and re- 
minders about current goals. If nec- 
essary, the tutor can provide the next 
small piece of code so that the stu- 
dent can continue. This is done at the 
student's request or after he has 
made more than the maximum 
number of allowed errors— usually 
two— for that portion of code. The 
goal here is for the student to do as 
much of the work as possible. Stu- 
dents learn much more effectively by 
doing than by watching. By providing 
the next portion of code, the tutor 
enables the student to work through 
the rest of the problem in cases where 
he might otherwise have given up. As 



a consequence, he can tackle more 
and more difficult problems. 

A major design feature of the tutor- 
ing interface provides the student 
with a structured editor through which 
to enter code. This editor automatical- 
ly balances parentheses and provides 
placeholders for the arguments of 
each function. For example, to write 
a function definition in LISP, you must 
use the function defun followed by 
the function name, a parameter list, 
and the function body. To begin, the 
student types a left parenthesis and 
the word defun. As soon as he types 
the space following that word, the 
tutor redisplays the code as 

(defun <NAME> < PARAMETERS > 
< PROCESS > 
) 

The symbols in angle brackets in- 
dicate arguments that must be coded. 
The tutor places the cursor under- 
neath < NAME> and highlights it to 
indicate that the function name must 
be coded next. 

This structured editor relieves stu- 
dents of the burden of balancing paren- 
theses and checking syntax. It enables 
them to focus on the more conceptual- 
ly difficult aspects of LISP. Our results 
show that this leads to faster learning 
of these major techniques and skills — 
with no deficit in syntax knowledge. 
Students removed from the tutor per- 
form as well as or better on all aspects 
of coding, including algorithm design, 
memory for LISP functions, and syn- 
tax, than those conventionally taught. 

The editor also facilitates commu- 
nication between the student and the 
tutor. Our studies of interfaces have 
shown that in the normal question- 
and-answer format of most educa- 
tional software, the tutor and the stu- 
dent can easily get "out of sync" on 
complex problems, where the student 
is not sure what part of the problem 
the tutor is talking about. In the LISP 
tutor, the student types directly into 
the code, replacing one of the place- 
holders, and thus it is always clear 
what part of the problem is being 
coded. Furthermore, these symbols 
help to communicate the conceptual 
structure of the programming prob- 



lem. For example, when the student 
types the iterative construct prog, the 
tutor provides the template for 
iteration: 

(prog < LOCAL VARIABLES > 
<INITIALIZATIONS> 
<BODY> 
<REPEAT> 
) 

This template helps to structure the 
problem into a list of local variables, 
initializations of those variables, code 
for the program body (i.e., the re- 
peated actions), and a return to the 
start of the loop. In many cases a sym- 
bol is expanded into more detailed 
symbols; for example, the < BODY> 
is coded as two portions: a 
TERMINATING CASE> and the 
< UPDATING CODE>. 

When an error arises or the student 
requests assistance, the tutor con- 
structs an English explanation based 
on templates associated with each 
production rule. These explanation 
templates allow the tutor to describe 
an error or provide a hint by using a 
general rule and making reference to 
the specific problem being coded. 
However, writing programs to under- 
stand natural language is an enormous- 
ly difficult and expensive task. In fact, 
students' descriptions of their algo- 
rithms are often hard for even human 
tutors to understand. Therefore, when 
the student is working with the tutor 
to design an algorithm, rather than 
having him type in English responses 
to the tutor's questions, we provide a 
menu of choices for his responses. 
This menu is constructed from the 
English descriptions of the correct 
and buggy production rules under 
consideration. 

Learning LISP 
with the Tutor 

Currently the LISP tutor contains ap- 
proximately 32 5 production rules 
about planning and writing LISP pro- 
grams and 475 buggy versions of 
those rules. It is effective in diagnos- 
ing and responding to between 45 
and 80 percent of the student's errors, 
depending on the complexity of the 

{continued) 



162 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Move over, Crosstalk 




The NightOwrs in town 
and he's packing a 
16-bit MEX! 



Last year, the NightOwl 
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NightOwl 



Inquiry 284 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 163 



LISP TUTOR 



T^ble 1: The LISP curriculum. 

1. Basic LISP functions 

2. Defining new function 

3. Conditionals and predicates 

4. Structured programming 

5. Progs, input/output, and evaluation 

6. Integer-based iteration 

7. Integer- based recursion 

8. List- based recursion 

9. Li st- based iteration 

10. Advanced recursion 

11. Advanced programming constructs: Maps, Dos, Lets 

12. Property lists and arrays 

13. Search techniques 

14. An advanced problem: Waterjug 

15. List structure and destructive functions 

16. Macros and advanced function types 
17 Advanced topic: Pattern Matching 

18. Advanced topic: Implementing Production Systems 



Listing 1: The dialogue between student and computer tutor to define the 
function rightp. 

Define rightp. It takes 3 arguments, sidel, side2, and side3, which represent the 
lengths of the three sides of a given triangle, where side3 is the longest side, rightp 
tests whether the three sides form a right triangle. In a right triangle, the sum of the 
squares of sidel and side2 is equal to the square of side3. However, your function 
should allow for a measurement error of 2 percent. In other words, your function 
should return t if the sum of the squares of the first two sides is within 2 percent of 
the square of the third side, 

For example (rightp 3 4 5.01) = t, because 3 squared + 4 squared = 25, which is 
within 2 percent of 5,01 squared. 

1. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) (cond)) 

Yes, you could use cond here, but there is a much easier way to test if the sum 
of the squares of the first two sides is within 2 percent of the square of the third. 
You can use a predicate, since we only have one test to do. 

2. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (difference) <NUM2>)) 

You want to code the amount of difference between the sum of the squares of 
the first two sides and the square of the third side, and you do not care which 
of those two numbers is larger. So we want to take the absolute value of their 
difference. 

3. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (abs (difference <NUM3> <NUM4>)) 
<NUM2>)) 

Which do you want to do first? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Write code to get the sum of the squares of the first two sides. 

2 Write code to get the square of the third side. 

Menu choice: 1 



4. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (abs (difference (plus) <NUM4>)) 
<NUM2>)) 



[continued) 



Each lesson takes 
from one to four 
hours to complete. 



lesson and the amount of testing we 
have conducted. The curriculum we 
have designed is shown in table 1. The 
system successfully tutors students 
through problems on lessons 1 to 10, 
each lesson taking from one to four 
hours to complete. Each topic in- 
volves a small instructional booklet 
and many problems practicing the 
skills taught in that lesson. Our goal 
in designing these booklets was to 
keep the written instruction to a mini- 
mum. There is considerable evidence 
that written technical instruction is 
most effective when it is brief (see 
reference 5). 

Most of the time in any lesson is 
spent going through problems. List- 
ings 1 and 2 illustrate sample dia- 
logues in which the tutor monitors the 
student's progress through simple 
problems. This does not present the 
tutor as it really appears. Instead, it 
shows essentially teletypewriter versions 
of the student-tutor dialogue. The ac- 
tual interaction involves the use of 
several display windows: a code window 
in which the student types the code, 
a tutoring window in which tutoring feed- 
back is displayed, and a goals window 
in which reminders are presented. 

In the teletypewriter versions the 
tutor's output is given in normal type 
characters, while the student's input 
is shown in bold characters. These list- 
ings present "snapshots" of the inter- 
action; each time the student pro- 
vokes a response, we have listed his 
input along with the tutor's response 
(numbered for convenience). The total 
code as it appears on the screen is 
shown, although the student has 
added only what is different from the 
previous code {shown in boldface 
type). For example, in line 2 of listing 
1 he has typed (lessp (difference as 
an extension of the code in line 1. 

It is important to note several things 

{continued) 



164 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



MICRO CAP and MICRO LOGIC 
put your engineers on line.. 

not in line 














/vfxr/ 




/Vl^OWM IVOl?KSr/tT»^H 




c 



'I I7*«e#'<.-' 



P 



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"Typical MICROCAP Transient Analysis 



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'Typical MICROLOGIC Diagram " 



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Inquiry 361 



Inquiry 149 



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COMPUTERS & TERMINALS 



ADDS QUME 

ALTOS SANYO 

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LISP TUTOR 



No. You should create a helping function for this code, rather than coding it 
directly. Our function, rightp, is now 4 levels of embedding deep, and the rela- 
tion we are about to code— the sum of squares of two numbers— would be a 
useful helping function. Thus, let's code the sum of the squares of the first two 
sides using a helping function. 

5. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (abs (difference (sumsq <ARGUMENTS>) <NUM4>)) 
<NUM2>)) 

What do you want the helping function sumsq to do? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Take 2 arguments, the square of the first side and the square of the 
second side. Compute their sum. 

2 Take 2 arguments, the first side and the second side. Compute the 
sum of the squares of these numbers. 

3 Have the tutor choose. 

Menu choice: 1 

No. We wouldn't need a helping function just to compute the sum of two 
numbers. You should create your helping function so that it does more than just 
a sum. 

It would be better to define sumsq so that it takes two arguments, in this case. 
[1] the first side, and [2] the second side, and computes the sum of the squares 
of these numbers. 

Menu choice: 2 

6. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (abs (difference (sumsq sidel side2) (times))) 
<NUM2>)) 

You should use a helping function that you have already coded, square. Since 
this function computes the square of a number, you can use it to code the 
square of the third side. 

7. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (abs (difference (sumsq sidel side2) (square side3))) (plus))) 

I don't understand that, Rob. How are you going to code 2 percent of the 
square of the third side? 

[EXPLAIN] 

OK. I'll explain what I wanted. You qould either code this directly or create a 
helping function here to code 2 percent of the square of the third side. Let's 
create a helping function just to make things easier. We'll call this helping func- 
tion percentage. We will define percentage when we are finished coding rightp. 

What do you want the helping function percentage to do? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Take 2 arguments, one hundredth of 2 and the square of the third 
side, Compute their product. 

2 Take 2 arguments, 2 and the third side. Compute the given percent- 
age of the square of its second argument. 

3 Take 2 arguments, 2 and the square of the third side. Compute the 
given percentage of its second argument 

4 Take 1 argument, the square of the third side. Compute 2 percent of 
its argument. 

5 Have the tutor choose. 

Menu choice: 3 
Very good. 

8. (defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 

(lessp (abs (difference (sumsq sidel side2) (square side3))) 
(percentage 2 (square side3)))) 

{continued) 



166 B YTE • APRIL 1985 




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LISP TUTOR 



about these dialogues. First, recall 
that the tutor balances parentheses 
and provides placeholders (e.g., 
<CASE>, <NAME>, <NUM>) 
for portions of code that need ex- 



panding. Second, despite the large 
portions of code added from one line 
to the next, it understands each 
separate word or symbol the student 
enters, and it responds with an error 



OK. Now we have finished coding the function rightp. Let us now code the 
helping function(s) we used but haven't yet defined. 

Which do you want to do first? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Define the helping function sumsq. 

2 Define the helping function percentage. 

Menu choice: 1 

Define the helping function sumsq. It takes 2 arguments. (num1 num2) are the 
suggested names for the arguments, but you may name them whatever you 
wish, sumsq should compute the sum of the squares of numl and num2. 

9. (defun sumsq (s y) 

(plus (square s) (square y))) 

OK. Now we have finished coding the function sumsq. Let us now code the 
helping function(s) we used but haven't yet defined. 

Define the helping function percentage. It takes 2 arguments, (pent total) are the 
suggested names for these arguments, but you may name them whatever you 
wish, percentage should compute pent percent of total. 

10. (defun percentage (x y) 

< PROCESS > 

[EXPLAIN] 

OK. I'll explain what I wanted. Let's figure out how to code x percent of the 
second number. 

How can you code x percent of the second number? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Multiply the second number by one-hundredth of x. 

2 Multiply the second number by x. 

3 Divide the second number by 100. 

4 Have the tutor choose. 

Menu choice: 1 
Good. 

11. (defun percentage (x y) 

(times <NUM1> <NUM2>)) 

What do you want to do first? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Write code to get one-hundredth of the first number, 

2 Write code to get the second number. 

Menu choice: 1 

12. (defun percentage (x y) 

(times (quotient x .01) <NUM2>)) 

No, that is not the right number. How are you going to specify one hundred in 
LISP? 

13. (defun percentage (x y) 

(times (quotient x 100) y)) 

OK. Now we have finished coding the function percentage. There are no more 
helping functions to define. 



message if necessary for any of those 
items. 

THE rightp PROBLEM 

Listing l presents a dialogue from 
lesson 4 that focuses on decompos- 
ing a problem into a set of subfunc- 
tions. Although this dialogue contains 
more errors than the typical student 
makes, it is a good illustration of how 
the tutor responds to errors and re- 
quests for assistance. The student is 
allowed to input information until he 
types cond, at which point the tutor 
tells him that a conditional structure 
is not necessary. (The actual screen 
setup is shown in figure L) Next he 
types (lessp (difference (line 2) and 
receives a hint; he correctly inserts the 
absolute value function (abs) before 
difference in line 3. Note that the tutor 
presents a menu when it doesn't 
know what the student will do next. 
For instance, since the arguments to 
difference in rightp can be in either 
order, it needs to know which one will 
be typed next, and it asks him via the 
menu following line 3. 

After line 4 the tutor gives the stu- 
dent information about when it is use- 
ful to code a separate helping func- 
tion. It queries him after line 5 to 
make sure they agree on what that 
helping function will compute. This is 
an example of the tutor's planning 
mode. In this case, the student is 
mistaken about what the subf unction 
should do; the tutor corrects him. 
After line 7 it determines that his code 
will not achieve the goal. However, 
this input does not match any of the 
buggy rules in the ideal model, so the 
tutor provides minimal feedback: it in- 
dicates that it cannot understand the 
input and queries the student to re- 
mind him about what he should be 
trying to code. This hint is not enough 
for the student, who asks for an ex- 
planation by hitting a special key 
whereupon the tutor helps him 
specify another helping function, 
percentage. 

The final form of rightp is displayed 
in line 8. In line 9 the student defines 
the helping function sumsq without 
error and goes on to define percent- 

{continued} 



168 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inside Outside 






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money order, or order by credit card. Per- 
sonal checks, allow 18 days to clear. 
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Sat. 9:00 a.m.-l:00 p.m. PST 

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Inside California 

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London (01) 223-4569 
Paris (01) 321-5316 
Sydney (02) 579-3322 

©Qubie' 1984 






LISP TUTOR 



age in line 10. He is stuck as to what 
to do after typing the function body 
and requests an explanation. The 
tutor helps him refine his algorithm. 
After this he defines percentage with 
one error in line 12. 



After the student defines rightp and 
its helping functions, the. LISP tutor 
puts him into a real LISP environment 
where he can experiment with them 
and try variations. After he experi- 
ments to his satisfaction, the tutor 



Yes, you could use COND here, but there is a much easier 
way to test if the sum of the squares of the first two sides 
is within 2% of the square of the third You can use a 
predicate, since we only have one test to do. 



CODE FOR rightp 



(defun rightp (sidel side2 side3) 
(cond ) 



GOALS 



Define the function rightp (rightp 3 4 5.01) = t. 
*** Test if the triangle is a right triangle. 



Figure 1: The screen configuration after line 1 in listing 1. 



In examples A and B what do you have to do to get the result 

of fact called with n? 

PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 . Multiply n by one less than n. 

2. Multiply n by fact of one less than n, 

3 Add n to the result of fact called with one less than n. 

4. Have the tutor choose. 

Menu Choice: 2 



CODE FOR fact 



(defun fact (n) 

(cond ((zerop n) 1) 

< RECURSIVE-CASE >)) 



EXAMPLES 



fact (n) 
(fact 1) = 
(fact 3) = 



fact (n-1) 
(fact 0) = 1 
(fact 2) = 2 



Figure 2: The screen configuration before line 4 in listing 2. 



provides the next problem in the 
lesson. 

The fact Problem 

Listing 2 illustrates how the tutor 
guides the coding of a recursive func- 
tion such as finding the factorial of a 
number, an early problem in lesson 
7. Although the student has some dif- 
ficulty with the syntax of the condi- 
tional test in lines 1 and 2, he basically 
codes the terminating test correctly 
Typically, we find students have little 
difficulty with terminating cases but 
great difficulty with recursive cases. 
The dialogue after line 3 shows how 
the tutor guides the student through 
the design of the recursive function. 
It leads him to construct examples of 
the relationship between fact (n) and 
fact (n-1) and then asks him to iden- 
tify the general relationship. Figure 2 
shows the screen image at a critical 
point in the design of this function. 

The dialogue after this point shows 
two classic errors students make in 
defining recursive functions. The first 
in line 4 is to call the function direct- 
ly without combining the recursive 
call with other elements. The second, 
in line 6, is to call the function recur- 
sively with the same argument rather 
than a simpler one. 

After the student finishes coding the 
function, he goes to the LISP window 
and experiments with it. He must 
trace the function and the recursive 
calls embed and unravel. Figure 3 
shows the screen image at this point, 
with the code on top and the trace 
below it. 

Evaluating the LISP Tutor 

We should emphasize that the tutorial 
knowledge in these interactions was 
not especially handcrafted for these 
problems; it shows the general ap- 
proach used by the tutor. That is the 
power of an intelligent tutoring 
system. Once we have a system that 
can tutor recursion problems, for ex- 
ample, we can easily add problems on 
that topic. Furthermore, although 
some testing is necessary to build our 
catalog of student errors and miscon- 
ceptions, once coded, the tutor can 

{continued) 



170 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



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FOLLOWING DISKETTE FORMATS: 

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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 171 



LISP TUTOR 



- YOU ARE DONE TYPE NEXT TO GO ON AFTER 

- TESTING THE FUNCTIONS YOU HAVE DEFINED - 

(defun fact (n) 

(cond {(zerop n) 1) 

(t (times n (fact (sub! n)))))) 



THE LISP WINDOW 



= > (trace (act) 
(fact) 

• > (fact 3) 

1 < Enter > fact (3) 

2 < Enter > fact (2) 
3 < Enter > fact (1) 
|4 < Enter > fact (0) 
|4 <EXIT> fact 1 
3 <EXIT> fact 1 

2 <EXIT> fact 2 
1 <EXIT> fact 6 
6 



Figure 3: The screen configuration at the end of the dialogue in listing 2. 



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lead students through a variety of cor- 
rect solutions and respond to a wide 
range of errors. Thus, it is generative 
in the sense that it creates instruc- 
tional interactions rather than using 
preprogrammed sequences. 

Generally, students are happy with 
the tutor and rate it better than learn- 
ing experiences they have had in 
other introductory programming 
courses. Their major complaints are 
that it uses too many menus and is 
sometimes slow. We are implement- 
ing optimizations and improvements 
to resolve both these problems. Inter- 
estingly students are more appre- 
ciative of the tutors guidance and 
more tolerant of its speed as the 
lessons increase in difficulty 

We have run one evaluation of the 
tutor, comparing it to experienced 
private human tutors and 4, on-your- 
own" condition. We found that the ad- 
vantage of private tutoring— human or 
computer— over the on-your-own con- 
dition increased as the material 
became more difficult. The students 
finished lesson 1 basically with the 
same speed and success in all three 
conditions. However, those in the on- 
your-own condition often had great 
difficulty getting through the recur- 
sion material; in fact, some did not 
finish the material in the allotted time. 
We had to extrapolate how long it 
would have taken them to finish it. 
Averaging the actual and extrapolated 
times, the students took 11.4 hours 
with the human tutors, 1 5 hours with 
the computer tutor, and 26.5 hours 
"on-your-own" to learn six lessons. 
Polls of students in a traditional 
classroom suggest that it takes over 
40 hours to cover the material in that 
situation. 

We tested the three groups just 
before the recursion exercises. We 
found essentially identical perfor- 
mances even though they were learn- 
ing at different rates. In another 
evaluation, we found students work- 
ing with the tutor learned nine lessons 
of material faster and performed bet- 
ter on competence tests than students 
learning without the tutor. Thus, the 
basic conclusion is that the human 

(continued) 



172 BYTE • APRIL 1985 




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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 173 



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LISP TUTOR 



Listing 2: The dialogue involved in defining the function fact, which computes 
the factorial of the number given. 



Define the function fact. It takes a number argument, n, and computes the factorial 
of n, which is the result of multiplying n x n-1 x n-2 ... x 1. For instance, 
(fact 3) = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6. By definition, the factorial of is 1. 

1. {defun fact (n) 

(cond ((equal) < ACTION >) 
<RECURSIVECASE>)) 

I assume that you are trying to test if the number argument is equal to the 
number zero. There is a special function for testing equivalence to zero. Try to 
use that function instead of equal. 

What code can you write to test if the condition for terminating case is true? Try 
writing a predicate. 

2. (defun fact (n) 

(cond ((zero < ACTION >) 
<RECURSIVECASE>)) 

Did you mean zerop (y or n)? y 



(defun fact (n) 
(cond ((zerop n) 1) 

<RECURSIVECASE>)) 


Is the value of fact in the recursive cases calculated by; 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 


1 Calling fact recursively with n. 

2 Multiplying n by fact of n minus 1, 

3 Getting 1 2 ... n and then multiplying the results. 

4 Have the tutor choose. 


Menu choice: 3 



That is a reasonable way to think of doing factorials but it is not a plan for a 
recursive function. Since you seem to be having trouble with the recursive cases 
let us work through some examples and figure out the conditions and actions 
for each of these cases. 

The recursive relationship is the relationship between fact called with n and fact 

called with: 

PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 n minus 1 

2 n equal to 

3 n plus 1 

4 Have the tutor choose. 

Menu choice; 1 

We will consider some concrete examples. We will characterize the recursive 
relationship between fact called with 1 and fact called with 0. 

What is the value of (fact 1)? 
Answer: 1 

What is the value of (fact 0)? 
Answer: 1 

EXAMPLES 
fact (n) fact (n-1) 

A. (fact 1) = 1 (fact 0) - 1 

We will consider some more concrete examples. We will characterize the recur- 
sive relationship between fact called with 3 and fact called with 2. 

What is the value of (fact 3)? 
Answer: 6 

{continued) 



174 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



LISP TUTOR 



What is the value of (fact 2)? 
Answer: 2 

EXAMPLES 
fact (n) fact (n - 1) 

A. (fact 1) - 1 (fact 0) = 1 

B. (fact 3) = 6 (fact 2) = 2 

Since there is only one recursive case characterized by the examples you have 
just worked out, the condition in this case can be just coded as T. We will focus 
on characterizing the action in this case. 

In examples A and B what do you have to do to get the result of fact called 

with n? 

PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Multiply n by one less than n, 

2 Multiply n by fact of one less than n. 

3 Add n to the result of fact called with one less than n. 

4 Have the tutor choose 

Menu choice: 2 

We have now worked through a series of examples that illustrate the recursive 
relation. We will now return to the goal of trying to produce LISP code that 
specifies the recursive relation. 

(defun fact (n) 
(cond ((zerop n) 1) 
(t (fact ))) 

You will have to use fact at some point but right now you want to multiply. 

(defun fact (n) 
(cond ((zerop n) 1) 
(t (times <NUM> <NUM2>)))) 

What do you want to do first? 
PRESS: IF YOU WANT TO: 

1 Write code to get the number argument. 

2 Write code to get the recursive part. 

Menu choice: 1 

(defun fact (n) 
(cond ((zerop n) 1) 
(t (times n (fact n))))) 

You cannot just code n at this point. What you want to do is subtract one from 
n. 

(defun fad (n) 
(cond ((zerop n) 1) 
(t (times n (fact (difference )))))) 

difference would work in this case but it is more appropriate to use the function 
subl when you are subtracting 1 from a number. 

(defun fact (n) 
(cond ((zerop n) 1) 
(t (times n (fact (subl n)))))) 



tutor is still best, the computer tutor 
not that far behind (and constantly im- 
proving), and the traditional on-your- 
own condition much worse. 

Today and Tomorrow 

Currently, we get satisfactory perfor- 
mance of the tutor on a VAX 72 5 with 



3 megabytes of memory devoted to 
a single student. Our planned op- 
timizations should enable it to handle 
a pair of students simultaneously run- 
ning on the same machine. These im- 
plementations are cost-effective in ex- 
pensive private schools like CMU or 
in industry; however, they are clearly 



out of range for the general public. 
The amount of computational power 
required is considerable. Even in 
future more efficient implementa- 
tions we estimate a minimum of 1 
megabyte of memory will be neces- 
sary to tutor one student on one 
machine. By the late 1980s the com- 
putational power to deliver such in- 
struction should be more generally 
available. For instance, in conjunction 
with IBM, CMU is planning to have on 
campus by 1986 a personal computer 
with 1 megabyte of memory capable 
of 1 million instructions per second. 
Such a machine will be more than 
adequate to implement the LISP tutor. 
These technological trends en- 
courage optimism about the future of 
intelligent tutoring efforts, of which 
the LISP tutor is one. We hope that, 
with continued research in domains 
such as high-school mathematics and 
college-level programming, we will 
soon establish the conceptual foun- 
dations to use the computational 
power that will be available. The pros- 
pect is great of providing every stu- 
dent with the educational benefits of 
a private human tutor. When this hap- 
pens, the consequences for American 
education will be nothing short of 
revolutionary ■ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
This research is supported by Office of 
Naval Research under Contract No. 
N00014-84-0064. We would like to 
acknowledge the considerable contribu- 
tions of Robert Farrell. Elliot Jaffe. Beth 
Marvel, and Peter Pirolli to the research 
on the LISP tutor. 

REFERENCES 

1. Bloom, B S. "The 2 Sigma Problem: The 
Search for Methods of Group Instruction 
as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring." 
Educational Researcher, 13, 1984, page 3. 

2. Sleeman, D., and I. S. Brown, eds. Intel- 
ligent storing Systems. New York: Academic 
Press. 1982. 

3. Anderson, I. R., R. Farrell, and R. Sauers. 
"Learning to Program in LISP" Cognitive 
Science. 8, 1984, page 87. 

4. Sauers, R., and R. Farrell. CRAPES User's 
Manual Technical Report ONR-82-3. Pitts- 
burgh: Carnegie-Mellon University, 1982. 

5. Carroll, I. M. "Minimalist Training." 
Datamation, November 1984, page 125. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 175 



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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



PROUST 



by W. Lewis Johnson and Elliot Soloway 



PROUST (Program Understander for 
Students) is a knowledge-based sys- 
tem that finds nonsyntactic bugs in 
Pascal programs written by novice 
programmers. When students com- 
pile a program successfully, PROUST 
is automatically invoked to analyze it. 
PROUST reports any bugs that are in 
the program to the student. 

PROUST is not merely a tool that 
helps programmers find bugs, nor is 
it confined to a narrow class of bugs, 
such as uninitialized variables. It is 
designed to find every bug in most 
beginners' programs. PROUST is cur- 
rently capable of correctly identifying 
all of the bugs in over 70 percent of 
the programs that students write 
when we assign them moderately 
complex programming problems. 
When PROUST finds a bug, it does 
not simply point to the lines of code 
that are wrong; instead, it determines 
how the bug can be corrected and 
suggests why the bug arose in the first 
place. Our aim is to build an instruc- 
tional system around PROUST that 
assigns programming problems to 
students, reads their work, and gives 
them helpful suggestions. 

In designing PROUST we found it 
necessary to deal directly with the 



An automatic debugger 
for Pascal programs 

variability of bugs in beginners' pro- 
grams. If a programming problem is 
assigned to a class of 200, the 
students will write 200 different pro- 
grams (assuming that they do not 
cheat). There is variability both in their 
programs' designs and bugs. Some 
bugs, such as missing variable ini- 
tializations, are accidental omissions 
that can be easily recognized and cor- 
rected. Other bugs result when the 
programmer fails to reason through 
the interactions between com- 
ponents. In isolation, each piece of 
the program may appear correct, but 
when combined, the program doesn't 
work. Still other bugs result from 
misconceptions about programming. 
The code may appear correct to the 
programmer, but it doesn't do what 
he or she expects, for reasons he or 
she does not understand. Bugs result- 
ing from misconceptions are the most 
serious; students stand to benefit the 
most from having such problems 
pointed out to them. 

If a debugging system is to cope 
with the various types of errors that 
programmers make, it must under- 
stand what the programmer is trying 
to do. Debugging systems usually 
don't concern themselves with what 



the program is supposed to do, they 
only analyze what the program actual- 
ly does (see references 1,2, and 3). 
Figuring out how a program is sup- 
posed to work is not easy; to do it a 
debugger requires information about 
the programming problem and knowl- 
edge about how to write programs. 
Nevertheless, identifying the program- 
mer's intentions is worth the effort, 
because this knowledge makes it 
possible to identify more bugs, as well 
"as to understand their causes. 
Tb show how knowledge of the pro- 

{continued) 
W Lewis lohnson (POB 2 1 58, Yale Station, 
New Haven, CT 06520) is a research 
associate at Yale He has a B.A. from 
Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Yale 
University. His interests are artificial in- 
telligence, software engineering, and computer- 
aided instruction. Dr. }ohnson has been 
pursuing research in artificial intelligence at 
Yale since 1978. 

Elliot Soloway (Department of Computer 
Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 
06520) is an assistant professor at Yale. He 
has a B.A. in philosophy and a PhD. in com- 
puter science from the University of 
Massachusetts at Amherst. Dr. Soloway 
heads a group at Yale that is exploring the 
cognitive underpinnings of programming. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 179 



PROUST 



grammer's intentions assists debug- 
ging, we will present two examples of 
"buggy" programs and discuss why 
alternative approaches to automatic 
debugging fail to identify such bugs. 
Then we will describe how PROUST 
analyzes such programs. Finally we 
will present some statistics showing 
PROUST's performance on large 
numbers of students solutions to a 
typical assignment in an introductory 
programming class. This will help sup- 
port our claim that PROUST's ap- 
proach is adequate for the majority 
of novice programmers' programs. 

Examples of Program Bugs 

Here is a simple programming prob- 
lem called the Averaging Problem: 



Write a program that reads in a se- 
quence of positive numbers, stpp- 
ping when 99999 is read. Compute 
the average of these numbers. Do 
not include the 99999 in the aver- 
age Be sure to reject any input that 
is not positive. 

The student's program must compute 
the average of a series of positive 
numbers. It must ensure that the in- 
put to the program is in fact positive. 
The input terminates when a specific 
value— 99999— is read. Values such as 
this, which signal the end of input, are 
called sentinel values. 

Figure la shows a sample solution 
to the Averaging Problem. This pro- 
gram works except for the following 



(a) 




1 


PROGRAM Average( Input, Output ); 


2 


VAR Sum, Count, Val, Avg: REAL; 


3 


BEGIN 


4 


Sum := 0; 


5 


Count ; = 0; 


6 


Writeln( 'Enter Value:' ); 


7 


Read( Val ); 


8 


WHILE Val <> 99999 DO 


9 


BEGIN 


10 


WHILE Val<=0 DO 


11 


BEGIN 


12 


Writeln( 'Invalid entry, reenter' ); 


13 


Read( Val ); 


14 


END; 


15 


Sum := Sum + Val; 


16 


Count :■ Count+1; 


17 


Writeln( 'Enter value:' ); 


18 


Read( Val ); 


19 


END; 


20 


IF Count >0 THEN 


21 


Write! n( 'No data entered' ) 


22 


ELSE BEGIN 


23 


Avg : m Sum/Count; 


24 


Writeln( 'The average is, 'Avg ); 


25 


END; 


26 


END, 


(b) 




PROUST's output: 


You 


re missing a sentinel test. If a sentinel value is input immediately following a 


nonpositive value, your program will treat it as valid data. 


To see this, try the following data in your program; 


5 


- 5 99999 



Figure 1: {a} One novice programmer's attempt at implementing the Averaging 
Problem, (b) PROUST explains the bug lurking in the program in concise English 
sentences and even offers data illustrating the error. 



bug: if you type 99999 immediately 
after typing a nonpositive value, the 
program will continue to prompt for 
data after the 99999 is read. When 
the program finally does terminate, 
the average will be incorrect. For ex- 
ample, suppose that you input 5,-5, 
99999. Instead of terminating when 
the 99999 is read, the program re- 
quests another input. If the user then 
entered another 99999, the program 
would not print the average as 5, but 
instead would print (5+99999)/2, or 
50002. 

The program interprets 99999 as 
data when the sequence 5, -5, 
99999 is read because when the pro- 
gram reads the -5, it enters the input- 
validation loop, which starts with line 
10, WHILE Val < = DO. This loop 
is intended to iterate until a positive 
value is typed in; 99999 is positive, 
so when the 99999 is read, control 
leaves the input-validation loop. How- 
ever, the program was written with the 
assumption that when the input- 
validation loop is exited, the current 
value of Val is valid input data. In this 
case, Val is not valid data; it is 99999, 
the sentinel value. The loop never- 
theless processes 99999 as if it were 
data. To guard against this case, there 
should be a test for the sentinel after 
the input-validation loop. 

Figure lb is PROUST's output de- 
scribing the missing sentinel-test bug. 
The error is described in two ways: 
First it is described in English; then 
PROUST generates an example of 
data that causes the program to fail. 

Now look at the program in figure 
2a. This is another solution to the 
Averaging Problem, and the bug in 
this program is also fairly obscure. If 
you type a positive value followed by 
a negative value, the negative value 
will be included in the average. Thus 
if you type -2,2, 99999, the average 
will be 2, but if you type 2, -2, 
99999, the average will be 0. 

Unlike the example in listing la, the 
programmer has not left out the sen- 
tinel test but has written the test in the 
form of a WHILE statement instead 
of an IF statement. The student prob- 
ably has a misconception about the 
distinction between the two state- 



180 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



PROUST 



ments and does not understand how 
the control flow in a WHILE loop 
works. As long as the body of the 
loop is straight-line code, the student 
has no problem. However, if the body 
of the loop contains tests, the student 
thinks that the tests should be written 
as WHILE statements to ensure that 
they repeat when the body of the 
loop does. We will refer to this mis- 
conception henceforth as the WHILE- 
for-IF misconception. PROUST's out- 
put for this example, shown in figure 
2 b, takes the misconception into ac- 
count and explains it to the student. 

The bugs in figures la and 2a illus- 
trate the following points. First, bugs 
frequently cannot be detected if you 
don't know what the program is sup- 
posed to do. Both of the programs 
shown run no matter what input is 
read; to determine that there is a bug, 
you must recognize that the programs 
output different results than they 
should. Bugs such as these are not 
unusual; the missing sentinel-test bug 
occurs in 18 percent of novice pro- 
grammers' solutions to the Averaging 
Problem. 

Second, novice programmers need 
help identifying such bugs. These 
bugs cause the programs to fail only 
after unusual inputs— ones that novice 
programmers are unlikely to test. In 
the case of the WHILE-for-IF miscon- 
ception, even if the programmer tests 
the case in question, he or she will 
probably not understand why the pro- 
gram fails because he or she expects 
the WHILE statement to perform a 
different function than it actually 
does. 

Alternatives to 
Intention-based Debugging 

Tb support our claim that debugging 
requires knowledge of the program- 
mer's intentions, we will examine the 
principal alternatives to intention- 
based debugging and show why they 
fall short. The methods we have con- 
sidered are analysis of I/O (input/out- 
put) behavior, analysis of data flow, 
and recognition of patterns of buggy 
code. 

Debugging by analyzing I/O be- 
havior involves determining when the 



(a) 




1 


PROGRAM Average( Input, Output ); 


2 


VAR Sum, Count, Val, Avg: REAL; 


3 


BEGIN 


4 


Sum :« 0; 


5 


Count : = 0; 


6 


Writeln( 'Enter value:' ); 


7 


Read( Val ); 


8 


WHILE Val< > 99999 DO 


9 


BEGIN 


10 


WHILE Val<«0 DO 


11 


BEGIN 


12 


Writeln( Invalid entry, reenter' ); 


13 


Read( Val ); 


14 


END; 


15 


WHILE Val <> 99999 DO 


16 


BEGIN 


17 


Sum := Sum + Val; 


18 


Count := Count +1; 


19 


Whteln( 'Enter value:' ); 


20 


Read( Val ); 


21 


END; 


22 


END; 


23 


IF Count «0 then 


24 


Writeln( 'No data entered' ) 


25 


ELSE BEGIN 


26 


Avg : = Sum/Count; 


27 


Writeln( The average is,Avg ); 


28 


END; 


29 


END 


(b) 




PROUST's output: 


You 


are using a WHILE statement at line 15 where you should have used an IF 


statement. You probably want the code starting at line 15 to execute once each 


time through the loop; your code will make it execute many times. 


The statement in question is: 


WHILE Val<>99999 DO . . . 



Figure 2: (a) Another novice programmer's attempt at implementing the Averaging 
Problem, {b) PROUST once again explains what the problem with the program is, what 
the programmer wanted to do, and what he actually did. 



output of the program is incorrect and 
suggesting bugs that might have 
caused the faulty behavior (see refer- 
ence 2). This approach treats debug- 
ging as similar to medical diagnosis 
(see reference 4). The faulty behavior 
can be thought of as the symptoms 
of the program, and the bugs can be 
thought of as the diseases. There are 
two problems with this approach: A 
program's symptoms cannot always 
be determined, and these symptoms 
cannot always be related to the bugs. 
The bugs in the programs in figures 
la and 2a affect the output of the pro- 
gram only occasionally; recognizing 



when this happens requires knowl- 
edge about what the output should 
look like. Since the WHILE-for-IF ex- 
ample fails to test the input for validi- 
ty after the first positive value is read, 
it appears that this program is miss- 
ing an input-validation test. It is only 
after inspecting the code that it 
becomes clear that the bug is not in 
the input-validation test but in the sen- 
tinel test. 

Another debugging approach you 
might try is data-flow analysis (see 
reference I). This is the approach 
many error-checking compilers use 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 181 



PROUST 



Data-flow analysis checks for clear 
anomalies in the pattern of data 
definition and for use of data in a pro- 
gram. It can determine when a vari- 
able is defined and never used or 
when a variable is never defined. 
However, if there are no anomalies in 
data flow, data-flow analysis will not 
detect any bugs. Neither example in 
the preceding section has data-flow 
anomalies, so this method would not 
detect the bugs. 

You might also try analyzing the 
structure of the program itself to see 
whether it suggests the presence of 
bugs. You could build a library of 
templates for common bugs, such as 
missing sentinel tests or WHILE 
statements in place of IF statements, 
and then match these templates 
against the program to identify the 
bugs. The problem with this approach 
is that you have no way of knowing 
where to match the bug templates in 
the program. For example, the 
WHILE-for-IF example has three dif- 
ferent WHILE loops. How could you 
tell which WHILE loop really should 
be an IF statement or if any of them 
should be an IF statement? You could 
try to make the bug template more 
specific by making it apply only when 
there are two loops with the same exit 
test, one inside the other. But that 
would make the template too specific; 
it would not apply to other cases 
where WHILE statements appear in- 
stead of IF statements. 

All of these approaches to debug- 
ging attempt to identify bugs without 
any understanding of what the pro- 
gram is supposed to do, and any such 
approach does little more than make 
guesses as to what bug is involved. In 
order to do better, a debugging sys- 
tem has to be able to infer the pro- 
grammer's intentions and relate them 
to the code. 

PROUST'S Approach 

PROUST is written in T, a dialect of 
LISP. The full system contains roughly 
1 5,000 lines of LISP code and runs on 
a VAX-1 1/750. A stripped-down ver- 
sion called Micro-PROUST has been 
developed in conjunction with 
Courseware Inc., of San Diego, Califor- 



MlCRO- 

PROUST FOR 

THE IBM PC 

Micro-PROUST is a subset of the 
larger implementation of 
PROUST It is capable of dealing with 
a limited range of novice programs and 
is currently set up to handle only those 
example solutions to the Averaging 
and Rainfall Problems provided with it. 
Micro-PROUST runs in Gold Hill Com- 
puters Inc. Golden Common LISP on 
an IBM Personal Computer with 5I2K 
bytes of memory. The source code and 
example programs are available for 
downloading from BYTEnet Listings. 
The telephone number is (603) 
924-9820. The file PRSTREAD.ME con- 
tains directions on how to run Micro- 
PROUST 



nia (see the text box "Micro-PROUST 
for the IBM PC" above for more infor- 
mation). Micro-PROUST is capable of 
recognizing the kinds of bugs that are 
described in this article; however, 
there are a variety of tricky bugs that 
PROUST can identify but Micro- 
PROUST cannot. (If you are interested 
in PROUST'S full diagnostic capabili- 
ties, consult reference 3.) 

PROUST's analysis of programs is 
based on knowledge of the program- 
ming problem. Students may solve 
the problem in a variety of ways and 
their programs may have a variety of 
bugs, but they are all trying to solve 
the same problem. Knowledge of the 
problem makes the variability of 
novice solutions more manageable. It 
also provides important information 
about the programmer's intentions. 

To provide PROUST with descrip- 
tions of the programming problems, 
we devised a problem-description 
language We described each problem 
in this language and provided 
PROUST with a library of the descrip- 
tions. Each problem description in 
PROUST's problem-description lan- 
guage is a paraphrase of the English- 
language problem statement that we 



hand out to students. 

To understand the students' pro- 
grams, PROUST also needs to know 
how to solve the problem. Solutions 
to a given programming problem may 
be implemented in a variety of dif- 
ferent ways. Suppose that there was 
only one way to test input for validity 
in a Pascal program, namely, to insert 
a WHILE loop at the top of the main 
loop, such as in figures la and 2a. 
Once PROUST knew that a program 
must validate input, it would know to 
look for such a loop, as well as for the 
sentinel test that must follow. How- 
ever, there are several ways of 
validating input. Listing 1 shows a 
loop that tests input in a different way. 
Instead of there being one input 
validation loop, there are two; one is 
at the bottom of the loop and the 
other precedes the loop. No addi- 
tional sentinel test is required when 
this method is used, because, as soon 
as input is validated, control flows to 
the main exit test of the WHILE loop. 
Therefore, without knowing what 
method the programmer is using for 
validating input, PROUST cannot tell 
whether to look for a sentinel test 
within the body of the loop. In figure 
la it is an error not to have such a sen- 
tinel test, but in listing 1 it is not. 
PROUST needs knowledge about pro- 
gramming so that it can understand 
how each student designed and im- 
plemented his or her solution. Once 
it understands the programmer's in- 
tentions, it can then use knowledge 
about common bugs to identify them 
in the student's program. 

PROUST analyzes programs by syn- 
thesis. When PROUST examines a 
program, it looks up the correspond- 
ing problem description in its library. 
It makes hypotheses about the 
methods programmers may use to 
satisfy each requirement in the prob- 
lem description. Each hypothesis is a 
possible correct implementation of 
the corresponding requirement. If 
one of these hypotheses fits the stu- 
dent's code, then PROUST infers that 
the requirement is implemented cor- 
rectly. If PROUST's hypotheses do not 
fit the student's program, then 
PROUST checks its database of com- 



182 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



PROUST 



mon bugs to see if it can explain the 
discrepancies. 

PROUST'S Problem 
Descriptions 

Problem descriptions in PROUST con- 
sist of programming goals and sets of 
data objects. Programming goals are 
the principal requirements that must 
be satisfied; sets of data objects are 
the data that the program must 
manipulate. 

The first step in translating an 
English-language problem statement 
into PROUST's problem-description 
language is to make the various goals 
that are mentioned in the problem 
statement explicit. Recall that the text 
of the Averaging Problem is the 
following: 

Write a program that reads in a se- 
quence of positive numbers, stop- 
ping when 99999 is read. Compute 
the average of these numbers. Do 
not include the 99999 in the 
average. Be sure to reject any in- 
put that is not positive. 

Solutions to this problem operate on 
a sequence of input data; let us call 
this sequence New. The following 
goals can be extracted from the prob- 
lem statement: 

• Read successive values of New, 
stopping when a sentinel value, 
99999, is read. 

• Make sure that the condition New 
< = is never true. 

• Compute the average of New. 

• Output the average of New. 

We must now take these goals and 
use them to generate a problem 
description for PROUST Each data 
object that the goals refer to is named 
and declared. Each goal extracted 
from the problem statement is re- 
corded in the problem description. 
The resulting problem description is 
shown in figure 3. 

Like all the data structures that we 
discuss in this article, problem 
descriptions are in list notation and 
every statement and expression is 
enclosed in parentheses. The name of 
the program is indicated with a 
Define-Program statement. Objects 



Listing 1; Yet another way to 
implement the input validation for the 
Averaging Problem. 



Read( Val ); 
WHILE Val<=0 DO 
BEGIN 
Writeln( Invalid entry, reenter' ); 
Read( Val ); 
END; 
WHILE Val<>99999 DO 
BEGIN 
Sum := Sum+Val; 
Count ;= Count+1; 
Writeln( 'Enter value:' ); 
Read(.Val ); 
WHILE Val<=0 DO 
BEGIN 
Writeln( Invalid entry, reenter' ); 
Read( Val ); 
END; 
END; 



are named using Define-Object state- 
ments. Goals are indicated using 
Define-Goal statements. 

Object names are preceded by 
question marks. There are two objects 
defined in the Averaging Problem 
description, ?Sentinel and ?New. The 
question-mark notation is used fre- 
quently in artificial-intelligence (AI) 
programs; it indicates that the vari- 
able is not a literal value but is a 
parameter that must be substituted 
when the data structure is used. For 
example the input-data object ?New 
will be substituted with the name of 
the Pascal variable that the student 
uses for storing the input data. The 
object ?Sentinel has the value 99999; 
wherever ?Sentinel appears in the 
problem description it can be sub- 
stituted with 99999. 

Objects can be either constant- 
valued or variable-valued. In this ex- 
ample, ?Sentinel is a constant, with 
the value 99999, and ?New is a 
variable. In PROUST's general prob- 
lem-description language objects can 
have a variety of properties asso- 
ciated with them; however, we will not 
use any such properties in this sim- 
ple example. 



Goal statements consist of a name 
of a type of goal, followed by a list of 
arguments. In the form (Average 
?New) for example, Average is a type 
of goal (to compute an average), and 
?New is the argument of the goal. 
This form requires that the program 
compute the average of ?New. 

Arguments to goal expressions can 
take a variety of forms. They can be 
objects, predicates, or even other goal 
expressions. In the expression (Input- 
Validation ?New (< = ?New 0)), one 
argument is an object (?New), and the 
other is a predicate ?New < = 0. In 
LISP, function names and operators 
precede their arguments, which is why 
the < = precedes the ?New and in 
the expression (< = ). If goals are 
nested, as in (Output (Average 
?New)), the outer goal refers to the 
value computed by the inner goal. 
Thus this goal requires that the pro- 
gram output the average of ?New. 

In this example PROUST's problem 
descriptions are a reasonable approx- 
imation of the original English-lan- 
guage problem statements. These 
problem descriptions describe what 
the programs must do but not how 
they are supposed to do it. PROUST 
must analyze each individual program 
and determine how it is intended to 
satisfy the problem requirements. 

Programming Knowledge 

Programming knowledge in PROUST 
is frame-based (see reference 5). In 
frame-based systems knowledge is 
organized into frames, each of which 
corresponds to a particular concept 
that the system "knows" about. 
Frames are similar to records in rela- 
tional databases, although the opera- 
tions that can be performed on 
frames are somewhat different. 
Knowledge in frames is organized into 
slots, which function as record field 
names, and fillers, which are the 
values assigned to each slot. 

The two kinds of programming 
knowledge that we will consider here 
are goals and plans (other types of 
programming knowledge are dis- 
cussed in reference 6). Goals are 
problem requirements that appear in 

[continued) 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 183 



PROUST 



problem descriptions. Plans are 
stereotypic methods for implement- 
ing goals. A large part of writing pro- 
grams consists of identifying goals 
that must be satisfied and selecting 
plans to implement these goals, 
Similarly, PROUST retrieves plans 
from its knowledge base for each goal 
referred to in the problem descrip- 
tion. It compares these plans to the 
student's program to determine which 
fits the program best. 

Figure 4 shows PROUST'S definition 
for the Sentinel-Controlled-lnput goal. 
The goal definition contains a series 
of slots: Instanced Form, MainSeg- 
ment etc., together with fillers for 
each of these slots: Read&Process, 



MainLoop:, ?New, etc These slots 
serve various functions, only some of 
which we will discuss here The most 
important slots are the Instances and 
InstanceOf slots. The Instances slot 
lists the various plans in PROUST'S 
knowledge base for implementing this 
goal. This slot's filler is a list of five 
items, each of which is the name of 
a plan. The InstanceOf slot indicates 
the class to which this goal belongs. 
The goal class in this case is Read& 
Process, which is the class of all goals 
that involve reading a sequence of 
values and processing them. 

Figure 5 shows a plan, the Sentinel- 
Process-Read-While plan. This is one 
of the instances of the Sentinel- 



((Define- Prog ram Average) 
(Define-Object ?New) 
(Define-Object ?Sentine! Value 99999) 
(Define-Goal (Sentinel-Controlled-lnput ?New ?Sentinei)) 
(Define-Goal (Input- Validation ?New (< = ?New 0))) 
(Define-Goal (Output (Average ?New)))) 



Figure 3: The Averaging Problem translated into PROUST's problem-description 
language. 



Figure 4: The definition of the goal Sentinel-Controlled-lnput in PROUST's 
problem-description language. 



(Goal- Definition Sentinel-Controlled-lnput 


InstanceOf 


Read&Process 


Form 


(Sentinel-Controlled-lnput ?lnput ?Stop) 


MainSegment 


MainLoop: 


MainVariable 


?New 


NamePhrase 


"sentinel-controlled loop" 


OuterControlPlan 


T 


Instances 


(Sentinel-Process-Read-While 




Sentinel-Read-Process-While 




Sentinel-Read-Process-Repeat 




Sentinel- Process-Read- Repeat 




Bogus-Counter-Controlled-Loop)) 



(Plan-Definition Sentinel-Process-Read-While 


Constants 


(?Stop) 


Variables 


(?lnput) 


Template 


((SUBGOAL (Input ?lnput)) 




(WHILE (<> ?lnput?Stop) 




(BEGIN 
?* 




(SUBGOAL (Input ?lnput)))))) 



Figure 5: A plan for implementing the goal Sentinel-Controlled-lnput 



Controlled-lnput goal. This plan is a 
simplified version of the one PROUST 
actually uses. Plans are also defined 
in terms of slots and fillers. The most 
important slot is the Template slot, 
which describes the form the Pascal 
code implementing this plan should 
take. Plan templates consist of Pascal 
statements, subgoals, and labels. The 
Pascal statements are written in list 
notation rather than ordinary Pascal 
syntax; for example, the form (WHILE 
( < > ?lnput ?Stop) . . .) in Pascal 
syntax would appear as WHILE ?ln- 
put < > ?Stop DO .... Symbols 
that are preceded by question marks 
are pattern variables; these are sub- 
stituted when the plan is used. ?New 
is substituted by a Pascal variable con- 
taining the input data, and ?Stop is 
substituted by a constant, the sentinel 
value. The ?* statement is a "wild 
card" pattern that can be substituted 
by an arbitrary sequence of Pascal 
statements; this is just a placeholder 
in the plan. Subgoals are indicated by 
(SUBGOAL . . .) forms in the tem- 
plate; these are goals that must in turn 
be implemented using other plans. 

Matching Plans 

Let's look at how plans and goals are 
used to understand a program. The 
plan in listing 1 has been imple- 
mented correctly You will see how 
PROUST hypothesizes a plan that the 
program might use and then matches 
this plan against the program. In this 
case the match succeeds because the 
plan is implemented correctly. In the 
next section we will examine what 
happens when plans fail to match 
because the student's code has bugs. 

The first step, before any analysis of 
goals and plans takes place, is to 
parse the student's Pascal program. 
This results in a parse tree. All subse- 
quent analysis of the program is per- 
formed on the parse tree rather than 
on the original program text. 

When PROUST analyzes a program, 
it selects goals from the problem 
description one at a time. Let's sup- 
pose that the goal that is selected first 
is (Sentinel-Controlled-lnput ?New 
?Sentinel). PROUST substitutes any 

{continued) 



184 B YTE • APRIL 1985 




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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 185 



PROUST 



PROUST substitutes 
any objects whose 
values are already 
known into the 
goal expression. 



objects whose values are already 
known into the goal expression. At 
this point the only information avail- 
able about ?New and ?Sentinel is 
what appears in the problem descrip- 
tion. There the value of ?Sentinel is 
listed as 99999, but the value of ?New 
is not listed. Therefore, the value of 
?Sentinel is substituted into the goal 
expression, but ?New is left un- 
changed. The resulting goal expres- 
sion is (Sentinel-Controlled-lnput 
?New 99999). 

PROUST must now retrieve from its 
programming knowledge base plans 
that could be used to implement the 
goal Sentinel-Controlled-lnput It 
retrieves the filler of the Instances slot 
of the definition of Sentinel-Con- 
trolled-lnput shown in figure 4. This 



filler is a list of five items: Sentinel- 
Process-Read-While Sentinel-Read- 
Process-While, Sentinel- Read- 
Process-Repeat Sentinel-Process- 
Read-Repeat and Bogus-Counter- 
Controlled-Loop. Each of these is the 
name of a plan. PROUST selects the 
first plan from the list, Sentinel- 
Process-Read-While. This will be 
PROUST'S initial hypothesis of how 
the program implements the goal 
Sentinel-Controlled-lnput 

Just as known values of objects were 
substituted into the goal expression 
(Sentinel-Controlled-lnput ?New 
?Sentinel), these same substitutions 
must now be performed on the 
selected plan. To see what substitu- 
tions must be made, PROUST ex- 
amines the Form slot of the definition 
of Sentinel-Controlled-lnput (Sentinel- 
Controlled-lnput ?lnput ?Stop). The 
Form slot indicates which pattern-vari- 
able names are used in the plans that 
implement the goal. By comparing 
the Form slot to the goal being 
analyzed, PROUST determines that 
each occurrence of ?lnput in the 
selected plan should be replaced by 
the value of ?New. Each occurrence 
of ?Stop should be replaced by the 
value of ?Sentinel or 99999. Because 
the value of ?New is not known, 



Student's program 

Write) n( 'Enter value:' 
Read( Val ); 



READ PU\N 

(Read Val) 

/♦?New 
Lsentin 
((SUBC 



Val 



WHILE Val <>99999 DO 
BEGIN «i 



WHILE Val<=0 DO 
BEGIN 
Write! n( 'Invalid entry, reenter' ) 
Read( Val ); 
END; 
Sum := Sum + Val; 
Count := Count+1; 
Writeln( 'Enter value:' ); 
Read( Val);^ READ PLAN 

END; 

(Read Val) 



Sentinel-Process-Read-While 

((SUBGOAL (Input ?lnput)) 
(WHILE (< > ?lnput 99999) 
(BEGIN 

?" 

(SUBGOAL (Input ?lnput))))) 



?New = Val 



Figure 6: This shows how the Sentinel-Process-Read-While plan is matched 
against the program in figure 1. 



PROUST simply replaces ?lnput with 
the variable name ?New. PROUST 
assumes that the process of match- 
ing the plan against the program will 
determine what the value of ?New is. 
Figure 6 shows how the Sentinel- 
Process-Read-While plan is matched 
against the program example in figure 
la. Matching starts with the WHILE 
loop. The pattern in the plan for the 
WHILE loop is (WHILE (< > ?New 
99999) . . .). There are two WHILE 
loops in this program: WHILE Val 

< > 99999 DO . . . and WHILE Val 

< = DO .... PROUST tries to 
match each pattern against each of 
these statements. (WHILE (< > 
?New 99999) . . .) matches WHILE 
Val < > 99999 DO . . . , provided 
that Val is substitued for ?New. 
(WHILE (<> ?New 99999) . . .) 
does not match WHILE Val < = DO 
. . . because the statement has a < = 
test instead of a < > test, and 
because it tests against instead of 
99999. Therefore PROUST selects 
WHILE Val < > 99999 DO ... as 
the match for the plan pattern. Since 
Val must be substituted for ?New so 
that the pattern matches, Val is 
recorded as the binding for ?New. 
Afterward, any component of the plan 
that has ?New in it will have Val sub- 
stituted for ?New. 

The next plan component that 
PROUST matches against the program 
is (BEGIN . . .). There are several dif- 
ferent BEGIN statements in the pro- 
gram that could be matched against 
this pattern. However, in the plan tem- 
plate the (BEGIN . . .) pattern ap- 
pears inside of the WHILE pattern 
that was just matched. This means 
that the BEGIN statement that this 
pattern matches must be located in- 
side of the WHILE Val < > 99999 
DO . . . statement. Therefore, there 
is only one BEGIN statement that has 
an appropriate match. 

When PROUST tries to match the 
(SUBGOAL (Input ?New)) com- 
ponents, a different type of process- 
ing is required. These plan com- 
ponents are goals; to match them 
against the program, PROUST must 
go through the same plan-selection 

{continued) 



186 BYTE • APRIL 1985 




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PROUST 



Since PROUST first 
generates a possible 
implementation and 
then matches it 
against the program, 
it is performing 
analysis by synthesis. 



process that it went through in select- 
ing the Sentinel-Process-Read-While 
plan. It first substitutes all pattern 
variables in the goal expression that 
have bindings. Since ?New has Val as 
a binding, the subgoal expression 
becomes (Input Val). PROUST then 
retrieves plans from the plan database 
that implements Input. One such plan 
is the READ PLAN, which employs a 
Pascal Read statement to input the 
value. This plan matches the Read 
statements in the program. 

This example shows how PROUST 
analyzes programs by predicting the 
plans that might be used and then 
testing these predictions. By selecting 
from a range of different plans and 
subplans for each goal PROUST is 
able to generate a variety of different 
ways of implementing each goal. 
Since PROUST first generates a pos- 
sible implementation and then 
matches it against the program, it is 
performing analysis by synthesis. In 
general, generating plan hypotheses 
and matching them against programs 
is rather more complex than the 
scenario presented here; for more in- 
formation, see reference 3. 

Identifying Bugs 

When the Sentinel-Process-Read- 
While plan was matched against the 
program in figure la, the plan 
matched exactly. Since there were no 
match errors, there must not have 
been any bugs in that particular plan. 
It is frequently the case, however, that 
none of the plans that PROUST 



predicts matches the program. When 
this happens PROUST must look for 
bugs that account for the mismatches 
in one of the plans. In this section we 
will discuss one of these mismatches 
in connection with the WHILE-for-IF 
example in figure 2a and show how 
it leads to the discovery of a bug. 

The bug in the WHILE-for-IF exam- 
ple is discovered in processing the 
Input-Validation goal. One of the plans 
that PROUST suggests for implement- 
ing this goal is the so-called Bad In- 
put Loop Test plan. This plan consists 
of a WHILE statement that tests the 
input to see if it is out of range, an 
error message inside the WHILE loop, 
an Input subgoal that rereads the in- 
put if it is out of range, and a test to 
see if the exit condition for the main 
loop has been satisfied. 

Listing 2 illustrates a correct imple- 
mentation of this plan (solving the 
Averaging Problem). 

The Bad Input Loop Test plan 
matches the WHILE-for-IF example of 
figure 2a in all but one respect: there 
is no test for the exit condition of the 
main loop, such as IF Val < > 99999 
THEN .... Where an IF statement 
is expected, a WHILE statement ap- 
pears instead. PROUST has thus en- 
countered a plan difference, i.e., a dif- 
ference between the expected plan 
and the code. When PROUST en- 
counters plan differences it does not 
give up on the plan; instead, it tries 
to find a way of interpreting the plan 
differences as bugs. 

In most cases plan differences are 
explained by means of bug rules. Each 
bug rule has a test part, which ex- 
amines the plan differences to see 
whether the rule is applicable, and an 
action part, which explains the plan 
differences. 

Figure 7 shows the bug rule that is 
invoked to explain the plan dif- 
ferences in the WHILE-for-IF example. 
The rule is written in slot-filler nota- 
tion; one set of slots constitutes the 
test part of the rule, and another set 
constitutes the action part. In the 
WHILE-for-IF rule the test part con- 
sists of a Statement-Type slot and an 
Error-Pattern slot. The Statement- 
Type slot indicates that the plan com- 



188 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



PROUST 



ponent that failed to match the pro- 
gram must be an IF statement. The 
Error-Pattern slot has the value 
(IF . WHILE); this indicates that a 
WHILE statement was found when an 
IF statement was expected. These test 
conditions are both met in the 
WHILE-for-IF example, so the action 
part of the rule is activated. The ac- 
tion part of this rule consists of a Bug 
slot; the filler of this slot is a descrip- 
tion of the bug associated with the 
plan difference. The bug in this 
case is a WHILE-for-IF confusion. 
PROUST's bug analyses of student 
programs consist of bug descriptions 
such as this. When PROUST presents 
its findings to the student, it takes 
each bug description and generates 
an English-language translation for it 
and, if appropriate, generates data il- 
lustrating the presence of the bug. 

Test Results 

PROUST has been tested on large 
numbers of beginners' programs. We 
assigned a class of novice program- 
mers the Rainfall Problem (an elabora- 
tion of the Averaging Problem), which 
is shown in figure 8a. 

We modified the Pascal compiler 
our students were using so that it 
would save copies of every syntac- 
tically correct program that they com- 
piled. This allowed us to examine not 
only the final solution the students 
handed in, but also every inter- 
mediate version of their program. 
Since the first versions are likely to be 
the buggiest, this let us test PROUST 
under the most difficult conditions 
possible. 

Figure 8b shows the results of run- 
ning PROUST on the Rainfall Problem. 
There are 206 different attempted 
solutions to the Rainfall Problem in 
the test set. Of these, PROUST was 
able to derive a complete understand- 
ing of 79 percent of the programs, 
identifying 94 percent of the bugs, a 
)ercentage far higher than people are 
ble to achieve. The chart also in- 
cates that 6 percent of the bugs 
>re not recognized and 55 were 
se alarms. Bugs are counted as not 
ognized if they are either misdiag- 

{continued) 



Listing 2: A correct implementation of the Bad Input Test plan. 

WHILE Va!<=0 DO 
BEGIN 
Writeln( 'Invalid data, please reenter' ); 
Read( Val ); 
END; 
IF Val < > 99999 THEN 



(Define-Rule WHILE-for-IF 
Statement-Type IF 
Error-Pattern (IF . WHILE) 

Bug (WHILE-for-IF Confusion (FoundStmt ,*MRet*) 

(Histlnst ,*HistoryNode*))) 



Figure 7: The WHILE-/or-IF bug rule invoked by PROUST to explain the plan 
difference between the faulty part of the program of figure 1 and the correct 
implementation of this part in listing 1. 



m 

Write a Pascal program that will prompt the user to input numbers from the terminal; 
each input stands for the amount of rainfall in New Haven for a day. Note: Since rainfall 
cannot be negative, the program should reject negative input. Your program should 
compute the following statistics from this data: 

1. the average rainfall per day 

2. the number of rainy days 

3. the number of valid inputs (excluding any invalid data that might have been read in) 

4. the maximum amount of rain that fell on any one day 

The program should read data until the user types 99999; this is a sentinel value signal- 
ing the end of input Do not include the 99999 in the calculations. Assume that if the 
input value is nonnegafive, and not equal to 99999, then it is valid input data. 



(b) 



Total number of programs: 


206 




Number of programs with bugs: 


183 


(89 percent) 


Number of programs receiving full analyses: 


161 


(79 percent) 


Total number of bugs: 


570 




Bugs recognized correctly: 


533 


(94 percent) 


Bugs not recognized: 


29 


(6 percent) 


False alarms: 


55 




Number of programs receiving partial analyses: 


35 


(17 percent) 


Total number of bugs: 


191 




Bugs recognized correctly: 


71 


(37 percent) 


Bugs deleted from analysis: 


70 


(37 percent 


Bugs not recognized: 


50 


(26 percent) 


False alarms: 


19 





Number of programs PROUST did not analyze: 



9 (4 percent) 



Figure 8: (a) The Rainfall Problem was assigned to a class of novice programmers to 
test the effectiveness of PROUST (b) This shows the results of running PROUST on 
the Rainfall Problem. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 189 



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PROUST 



Ultimately, PROUST 
will be incorporated 
into a programming 
curriculum for students. 



nosed or missed entirely. Bugs are 
counted as false alarms if they are 
either not present in the program or 
if they are present but misdiagnosed. 
Consequently, misdiagnosed bugs are 
counted both as false alarms and as 
not recognized, which inflates the 
total number of diagnosis errors. 

When PROUST fails to understand 
a program completely its ability to 
recognize bugs deteriorates; 17 per- 
cent of the programs were analyzed 
partially. In such cases PROUST 
deleted from its bug descriptions 
those bug analyses that were ques- 
tionable, given that the program was 
only partially understood. The bug 
descriptions that remained were fre- 
quently wrong, but at least PROUST 
was able to warn the student to take 
the analysis with a grain of salt. The 
remaining 4 percent of the programs 
deviated from PROUST'S expectations 
so drastically it could not analyze 
them at all. In these cases no bug 
report was generated. 

We are not yet sufficiently satisfied 
with PROUST's accuracy to make it 
generally available to students. The 
false-alarm rate should be lower, and 
the fraction of programs that PROUST 
analyzes completely should be higher. 
When part of a program cannot be 
analyzed, PROUST should try to 
determine why that part of the pro- 
gram cannot be analyzed and try to 
account for the unanalyzed code. 
Once this is done we expect PROUST 
to succeed on 80 to 85 percent of the 
programs it analyzes. At that stage we 
will make it available to students on 
line. 

Conclusion 

PROUST is capable of high-quality 
analysis of bugs in novice programs. 



It is almost at the level where it could 
be incorporated into a programming 
curriculum and provide significant 
benefits to students. Here we have 
given a simplified view of how 
PROUST finds bugs. The next step is 
to build an automated programming 
course around PROUST. Such a 
system would not only correct stu- 
dents' mistakes but would also sug- 
gest additional problems for the stu- 
dents to solve to give them practice 
where they need it. ■ 



AUTHORS' NOTE 

This work was cosponsored by the Person- 
nel and Training Research Groups, Psycho- 
logical Sciences Division, Office of Naval 
Research, and the Army Research Institute 
for the Behaviorial and Social Sciences, 
under Contract Number N00014-82-K- 
0714, Contract Authority Identification 
Number Nr 154-492. 

Additional papers dealing with bug 
classification, automatic debugging, and 
the cognitive underpinnings of program- 
ming can be obtained by writing to the 
following address; Cognition and Pro- 
gramming Project, Department of Com- 
puter Science, Yale University, POB 2158 
Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. 

Special thanks to Greg Kearsley and 
Leszek Izdebski of Courseware Inc. and 
Bret Wallach of Advanced Processing for 
their efforts in developing Micro-PROUST. 



REFERENCES 

1. Fosdick, L. D, and L. J. Osterweil. "Data 
Flow Analysis in Software Reliability." Com- 
puting Surveys 8, vol. 3, 1976, pages 
305-330. 

2. Harandi. ML T. "Knowledge-Based Pro- 
gram Debugging: A Heuristic Model." Pro- 
ceedings of the 1983 SOFTFAIR. 

3. Wertz, H. "Stereotyped Program Debug- 
ging: An Aid for Novice Programmers." In- 
ternational journal of Man-Machine Studies 16, 
1982, pages 379-392. 

4. Shortliffe, E. H. Computer-Eased Medical 
Consultations: MYCIN. New York: American 
Elsevier Publishing Co., 1976. 

5. Minsky, M. "A Framework for Represent- 
ing Knowledge." The Psychology of Computer 
Vision, P. Winston, ed. New York: McGraw- 
Hill, 1975. 

6. Johnson, W. L. "Intention-Based Diag- 
nosis of Programming Errors." Yale Univer- 
sity Department of Computer Science 
1984. 



190 BYTE • APRIL 1985 




i i i i H 




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192 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



ARCHITECTURES 

FORM 



AS ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE soft- 
ware grows in complexity and as AI 
applications move from laboratories 
to the real world, computational 
throughput and cost are increasingly 
important concerns. 

In general, there are two motives for 
increasing the efficiency of computa- 
tions. One is the need to obtain faster 
computation, regardless of cost. This 
may be due to explicit real-time con- 
straints or to current methods being 
taxed well beyond the limit of com- 
plexity or timely response. The other 
motive seeks to obtain a better cost/ 
performance ratio. Behind both, how- 
ever, is usually the imperative of real- 
world market pressures. 

Opportunities for increased efficien- 
cy in AI computations exist at every 
level. Improved instruction-set designs 
combined with improved AI language 
semantics allow more powerful com- 
piler optimization. Concurrent ma- 
chines allow parallel execution of LISP 
and declarative constructs, raising 
issues of and, or, and stream parallelism. 
Custom VLSI (very-large-scale integra- 
tion) hardware for current AI perfor- 
mance bottlenecks includes devices 
such as hardware unifiers, associative 
memory, and communication hard- 



by Michael F. Deering 

Hardware and software 
for efficient processing 



ware for coordinating parallel search- 
es. Many of these speedups are or- 
thogonal and can potentially increase 
performance by several orders of 
magnitude. However, this is not always 
the case; some language optimiza- 
tions have a tendency to serialize 
computation, thereby negating the 
gains of parallelism. 

As part of an effort to design a 
massively concurrent architecture for 
AI computation (the Fairchild FAIM-1 
project— see the text box on page 
202), this article examines several 
potential throughput increases and 
their interactions. 

Misconceptions 

There are several misconceptions 
about what needs to be done to im- 
prove computational throughput for 
AI. Since most AI programming is 
done in LISP, many researchers 
believe the key is simply to make LISP 
faster. However, this approach ignores 
other, easily obtainable potential 
speedups. 

Other computer scientists see no 
reason to concentrate on anything 
other than the fundamental problem 
of parallelism, an approach that 
presumes a routine solution of a very 



difficult problem: decomposing ar- 
bitrary AI computations to effective- 
ly use thousands of parallel proces- 
sors. A problem with this approach is 
that most programs, even ones with 
a high degree of inherent parallelism, 
almost always have several serial bot- 
tlenecks. As an example most parallel 
programs need to gather the result of 
one batch of parallel computations 
for reflection before generating the 
next batch. In many cases, these serial 
processes dominate the running time 
of the entire program. So you cannot 
ignore the issue of how to extract as 
much serial speed as possible from 
languages and machines. Otherwise, 
once you've built an expensive paral- 
lel machine hundreds of times faster 
than existing machines, a new com- 
piler or microcode might make some 
existing serial machines even faster. 
The machine coded unifier in the 
Crystal AI language for instance is 
two orders of magnitude faster than 
the LISP-coded unifier in the pre- 

icontinued} 

Michael F. Deering is a computer scientist with 
the Computer-hided Systems laboratory. He 
can be reached through Schlumberger Palo 
Alto Research. 3340 Hillview Ave., Palo 
Alto, CA 94304. 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 193 



ARCHITECTURES 



decessor PEARL AI language (see ref- 
erence 3). 

Software Improvements 

One way to improve AI language im- 
plementations would be to compile 
the language directly to machine 
code. Most AI languages" are not 
computer languages but packages of 
routines on top of an existing lan- 
guage, usually LISP. While this is a 
great way of rapidly prototyping a lan- 
guage and results in considerable sav- 
ings in development costs over a tra- 
ditional full compiler, it does not lead 
to very efficient implementations. If 
increasing the speed of AI applica- 
tions leads to the extreme of build- 
ing custom parallel processors, it is 
silly not to compile AI languages 
directly onto these processors. There 
is a large body of computer science 
knowledge on compilation that can 
be brought to bear, and great poten- 
tial for performance increases. (Con- 
sider the lOOtimes plus speed differ- 
ence between most LISP-based Pro- 
log interpreters and Warren's DEC-20 
Prolog compiler— see reference 17.) 
Make sure that the language is com- 
pilable. Because most AI languages 
have been interpreted, issues of com- 
pilability generally have not been 
thought through. Language features 
that seemed efficient in an interpreted 
environment may be very slow when 
compiled, if they are compilable at all. 



A proper choice of features in light of 
a compiled environment leads to 
more efficient program execution. 

Another problem with many AI lan- 
guages is the lack of general tools to 
support common applications. While 
it can be argued that this allows users 
to write their own customized tools 
(which may be very efficient), most 
users will do a much worse job than 
the language implementor could. For 
example, PEARL did not directly sup- 
port any particular theorem-proving 
or search system (such as forward and 
backward chaining), leaving users to 
their own devices. But the MRS sys- 
tem (reference 11), while providing a 
convenient meta-level control for 
users to write their own search sys- 
tems, also provides a range of built- 
in search strategies, from backward 
chaining to full-resolution theorem 
proving. An extensive library of well- 
written routines of general use speeds 
the operation of typical user pro- 
grams (not to mention their devel- 
opment). 

Hardware Considerations 

It is often claimed that conventional 
computer instruction sets are not well 
suited for AI software, but there have 
been few attempts to quantify the 
reasons why. For older-generation 
machines, you can easily point to 
severe address-space limitations and 
the lack of flexible pointer- 



Table I: The timing results of the aggregate function too for three LISP 
implementations on six different processors. 

LISPs vs. Processors on 
(defun foo(x)(+(car x)(cdr x))) 


Machine 


Zetalisp 


Franz LISP 


PSL 


VAX 


53.8 ^s 


13.9 ms 


5.6 

MS 


68000 


65.2 /is 


43.6 ms 


5.8 

MS 


68010 


68.6 mS 


43.6 mS 


10.6 
MS 


68020 


16.1 M s 


19.9 ms 


3.1 

MS 


MIT CADR 


19.0 mS 


n/a 


n/a 


3600 


6.4 mS 


n/a 


n/a 



manipulation facilities (reference 6). 
But what of the new, modern 
machines, such as the DEC VAX, 
Motorola 68000, National Semi- 
conductor 16000, and various RISC 
(reduced instruction set computer) 
machines— how do they compare with 
the custom LISP machines (references 
13 and 15)? lb obtain insights into 
instruction-set design, I examined 
several LISP systems and the fine 
details of their implementation 
(reference 5). 1 learned, among other 
things, that it is very important to 
identify how rich an environment you 
wish to support. For example con- 
trary to many people's expectations, 
on a large application program Franz 
LISP (reference 8) on a DEC VAX-11/ 
780 was not significantly slower than 
Zetalisp on a Symbolics 3600. The dif- 
ference was that nearly all type- 
checking and generic-function 
capabilities were either turned off (by 
the programmer) or missing in Franz 
LISP, where the overall environment 
was much poorer. Assuming that such 
features are not frills, I also examined 
the expense of providing them on dif- 
ferent architectures. 

Flexible LISP processing depends 
on dynamic type checking and 
generic operations. Associating the 
data type directly with the data ob- 
ject means that the data type will 
always be at hand during processing, 
and this is the reason that tagged 
memory architectures are well suited 
to LISP processing. Because of this 
association, the speed of various pro- 
cessors on the generic LISP task 
depends on how fast the processors 
can effectively emulate a tagged- 
memory architecture. 

I performed a number of experi- 
ments to compare LISP systems on 
different processor instruction sets. As 
a representative sample, table 1 
shows the timing results for a simple 
aggregate function incorporating 
some of the most common LISP 
primitives— CAR, CDR, plus, and 
function call/return. 

More extensive benchmarks have 
borne out roughly the same speed 
ratios. Not unexpectedly the variance 

[continued) 



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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 195 



ARCHITECTURES 



Listing 1: MC68010 assembly-language code for the LISP function CAR. The 
code in boxes can be replaced by enhancements to the instruction set to decrease 
the code's execution time. 



Zetalisp car for 68010 



To take the car we do a few lines of in line code and 
;then index jump to a subroutine. (Space for time.) 
The cons cell to take the car of is assumed in aO. 



;dispatch to CAR subr based upon the tag in upper bits of aO 
4 movel a0,d2 ;put a copy of the arg into d2 

24 Isll #8,d2 ;firsl 8 of: shift copy over by 9 bits 



10 


Isll #1,d2 


;last 1 of: shift copy over by 9 bits 


14 


andl #0x1F0,d2 


;and off non-tag (shifted over) 


4 


movel d2,a2 


;need tag in A-reg for dispatch 


18 


jsr CAR(a2) 


: branch to car table indexed by type 




;At return, the car 


of the object is in a2 



;The CAR subroutine. 

CAR + DTP-CONS: ;CAR procedure entry point 

;for nornal cons cell. 
;We will arrive here if the argument passed to car was of type 
; "pointer to cons cell". Other objects passed to car = > error 



;follow the point to the car 
4 moveal a0,d2 



;put a copy of the arg into d2 



14 


andl #0xFFFFFF,d2 


;and off tag 


4 


moveal d2,a2 


;put d2 into an address register 


12 


moveal (a2),a2 


;follow the car pointer. 



;dispatch to TRANSPORT subr based upon the tag 
; in the upper bits of a2 

4 movel a2,d2 ;put a copy into d2 

24 Isll #8,d2 ;first 8 of: shift copy over by 9 bits 



{continued) 



exceeded 50 percent. Slight modifica- 
tions of the compilers or instruction 
sets produced similarly large changes 
in the speeds. 

Existing Franz LISP and PSL (refer- 
ence 12) compilers for the DEC VAX 
and Motorola 68000 were used to 
compile too. Type checking was 
turned off to obtain the fastest 
speeds. (Both PSL and Franz LISP 
were told not to verify that the argu- 
ments of + were small integers; Franz 
LISP did and PSL did not check for 
numeric overflow.) The timing figures 
were generated by examination of the 
assembly code produced and some 
actual machine timings. The timings 
of Zetalisp for the 3600 and CADR 
were taken by running existing sys- 
tems. Zetalisp-like operations for the 
DEC VAX and Motorola 68000s were 
hand-coded, and the timings were 
produced in the same way as those 
for PSL and Franz LISP. The 68000 
and 68010 were 10-MHz, no-wait-state 
machines. The 68000 used 24-bit ad- 
dresses, leaving the upper 8 data bits 
free for tag values. The 68010 used 
32-bit addresses and required 
removal of the tag bits with an AND 
operation before addresses could be 
used. The 68020 timings are 
estimates based upon the best "cache 
case" timings in the 68020 data book 
and are not as accurate as the timings 
for the other machines. The 68020 is 
assumed to be running at 16 MHz 
with an external 16K-byte memory 
cache and memory-management unit 
(MMU), giving a memory-access time 
of 185 nanoseconds. (The 68020 has 
an additional small instruction cache 
on board.) 

Other experiments examined the ar- 
chitectural requirements for fast com- 
putation of some AI operations not 
directly supported by LISP, in par- 
ticular unification and associative 
search. When AI languages are fully 
compiled, these two functions often 
become the computational bottle- 
necks. For traditional microprocessor 
instruction sets, the requirements of 
these operations turned out to be the 
same as for LISP primitives; fast 
simulation of tagged architectures. 
More specifically, the instructions and 



196 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



ARCHITECTURES 



capabilities that would make a con- 
ventional microprocessor better 
suited for LISP (along with Prolog, 
Krypton, MRS, PEARL, etc.) are 

• "Extract bit field and dispatch": an 
instruction to extract a sequence of 
bits from an operand, then add these 
bits to a dispatch table address, and 
jump indirect. This is necessary for 
rapid handling of tag values in generic 
operations, type checking, and for 
helping with unification. 

• "Extract two bit fields, concatenate, 
and dispatch": an instruction for 
dispatching on the context of two 
operands (needed for the same 
reason as the one-argument version). 

• The memory address system of the 
processor should ignore the upper 
address bits of data addresses that 
are not otherwise in use. This allows 
the wasted space in 3 2 -bit pointers to 
be used as a tag field. 

In the Zetalisp-like code, more than 
30 percent of the time on the 68000s 
was spent in emulating the bit-field 
dispatch instructions. Stripping off the 
tag bits accounted for approximately 
another 10 percent. It is therefore 
estimated that if the existing micro- 
processors had hardware support for 
these features, full type-checking 
LISPs (like Zetalisp) could run almost 
twice as fast. These percentages come 
from hand-implementing several Zeta- 
lisp primitives on current micropro- 
cessors. As an example, listing 1 
shows the 68010 assembly language 
code for CAR. The number of pro- 
cessor clock cycles per instruction is 
shown in the left-hand column. The 
boxed code can be replaced by a 
single instruction (see listing 2). 

Listing 2 shows CAR for the 68010 
recoded, assuming two architectural 
refinements. First, assume that the up- 
per 7 bits of all addresses are ignored 
by the virtual-memory system. Sec- 
ond, assume one additional instruc- 
tion, "extract bit field and dispatch." 
This instruction takes the bit field out 
of the second argument, as specified 
by the first argument (format: 
< #starting-bit. field-width >), adds it 
to the third argument (the jump-table 

{continued) 











10 Isll #1,d2 ;last 1 of: shift copy over by 9 bits 






14 andl #0x1F0,d2 ;and off non-tag (shifted over) 






4 move! d2,a3 ;need tag in A-reg for dispatch 






10 jmp TRANSPORT(a3) ;branch to car table 






; indexed by type. 






The reason for this jump is to check 






;for possible invisible pointers, unbound, etc. 






TRANSPORT + NORMAL: ;jump entry point for normal 




;cons cell contents 


8 rts ; We're all done, return 


182 clocks, @10MHz = 18.2/iS 



Listing 2: The modified listing l code, incorporating architectural refinements to 
the processor's instruction set. 

;Now the car routine is recoded using the new instructions: 

;index jump to a subroutine. 

; dispatch to CAR subr based upon the tag in upper bits of aO 

22 extract-dispatch <#26,#6>,aO,CAR 
;The CAR subroutine. 

CAR + DTP-CONS: ;CAR procedure entry point for 

; normal cons cell. 
; follow the pointer to the car 

12 moveal (a0),a2 ;the upper 6 bits of aO are ignored. 
; dispatch to TRANSPORT subr based upon the tag 
;in the upper bits of a2 

22 extract-dispatch <#26,#6>,a2, DISPATCH 
TRANSPORT + NORMAL: ;jump entry point for normal 
;cons cell contents 
8 rts ;We're all done, return 



64 clocks, @10MHz =6.4^s, 2.8 times faster 



APRIL I985 -BYTE 197 



ARCHITECTURES 



base address), and indirectly jumps 
through this address. (The 68020 has 
a fast bit-field extraction instruction. 
This accounts for much of its in- 
creased speed over the older 68000 
on the LISP task in table 1.) 

For new, fully custom machine de- 
signs that are tailored specifically for 
AI, such features can all be built in. 



With a tagged architecture, many 
generic operations, such as add, do 
not need to be dispatch subroutine 
calls. Rather, the processor can ex- 
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add instruction and, if they are sim- 
ple integers, directly perform the add. 
If the arguments are of a more exotic 
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generate a software interrupt to an 
appropriate routine. Further, for such 
designs it is very helpful to have a 
"smart" memory subsystem capable 
of rapidly chasing down indirect 
pointers as on the DEC PDP-10 and 
the custom LISP machines. Additional 
customization of an AI instruction-set 
design generally falls into the 
category of complete, attached co- 
processors rather than just additional 
instructions. This tactic has already 
been taken by many microprocessors 
whose floating-point instructions are 
handled by what could be viewed as 
attached coprocessors. The specific 
categories of important attached co- 
processors include pipelined unifiers, 
associative-memory subsystems, mul- 
tiprocessor communication packet 
switchers, and special signal-pro- 
cessing chips for vision and speech. 
Studies of a custom instruction set 
for the FAIM-1 machine indicate that 
not only can a single processor be de- 
signed that is memory-bound by 
DRAM (dynamic random-access read/ 
write memory) access delays but that 
this is the case even when a large 
cache is employed. This is an impor- 
tant fact. It means that parallel 
machines sharing a single large com- 
mon memory are a bad idea because 
there isn't enough memory band- 
width to go around. 

Parallelism: The Great Hope 

Traditional views cite concurrency as 
a great method of obtaining increased 
computational power. In practice 
however, designers continue to con- 
centrate on making faster and faster 
single-processor machines. Now that 
hard technological limits have been 
reached for serial processors, paral- 
lelism has become recognized as 
perhaps the only hope for further per- 
formance increases. Unfortunately, 
concurrency is not free— it brings new 
systems organization problems to the 
fore. 

The first conceptual problem with 
parallelism is the confusion between 
multiprocess/^ and multiprocessors. There 
are algorithms that very elegantly ex- 
press a set of cooperating processes 

{continued) 



198 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



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(e.g., writers and readers), but these 
same algorithms have little or no in- 
herent parallelism that can be ex- 
ploited by parallel computers. Just 
because an algorithm can be ex- 
pressed in concurrent terms is no 
guarantee that, when run on many 
parallel processors, it will run 
significantly faster than as separate 
processes on a single sequential 
machine. 

The true measure of parallelism is 
how much faster a given program will 
run on n simple parallel processors 
compared to how fast it would run on 
a single simple processor and for 
what ranges of n this is valid. The best 
you can hope for in principle is a fac- 
tor of n speedup, but in practice this 
is rarely reached (due to overhead 
and communication contention). The 
maximum amount of speedup at- 
tained for a given program using any 
number of parallel processors in- 
dicates the inherent parallelism of 
that program. Unfortunately, for most 
existing programs written in tradi- 
tional computer languages, the max- 
imum parallelism seems to be about 
a four-times speedup (reference 10). 
This surprisingly low number is due 
to the style of programming enforced 
by the traditional languages. There 
are special-purpose exceptions to this 
rule and the hope is that nontradi- 
tional parallel languages will en- 
courage more concurrent algorithms. 
Compilers for parallel machines can 
take advantage of techniques such as 
and, or, and stream parallelism if AI 
languages support the concurrent 
control structures that give rise to 
them. But the jury is still out as to the 
amount of speedup such techniques 
can deliver. 

Another problem in parallelism is 
failure to take the entire systems con- 
text into account. Before building a 
parallel machine, you must not only 
simulate the machine but determine 
how to write large programs for it. 
This reveals potential flaws in the 
machine before commencing with 
time-consuming hardware develop- 
ment. The simulation must properly 
take scheduling and technologically 
realistic hardware-communication 



overhead into account or the timings 
produced will have little or no connec- 
tion to reality. 

Good examples of software systems 
that have not taken realistic hardware 
considerations into account are some 
of the parallel LISPs that have been 
proposed (reference 9). These pro- 
posals point out places in LISP-like 
processing where multiple processors 
could be exploited, but they do not 
analyze the overheads incurred. They 
usually assume that multiple pro- 
cessors share a single large main 
memory where CONS cells and other 
LISP objects are being stored. This is 
the equivalent of assuming that 
memory is infinitely fast, which is just 
as unrealistic as assuming that pro- 
cessors are infinitely fast. The prob- 
lem is that with current technology a 
single well-designed LISP processor 
could run faster than current mass- 
memory technology could service it. 
Adding processors would thus not 
result in any increase in through- 
put. 

There are several reasons why 
designers of parallel LISPs may have 
missed this fact. Perhaps one is that 
current 68000 LISPs are not memory- 
bound. Another is the potential use 
of caches to reduce the required 
memory bandwidth to each pro- 
cessor. However, even with caching, 
the number of processors that can be 
added is not unlimited; a 90 percent 
hit-rate cache would accommodate 
only 10 processors. 

What about the thousand-processor 
architectures envisioned? Experimen- 
tal data shows that a single processor 
can run significantly faster than mem- 
ory can service it: You must employ 
a cache just to keep a single pro- 
cessor running full tilt. The lesson is 
that processors are still much faster 
than memories, and any sharing of 
data between multiple processors 
(beyond a few) must be done with 
special communication channels. In 
other words, MIMD (multiple instruc- 
tion, multiple data) machines with a 
single shared memory are a bad 
parallel architecture. This has impor- 
tant implications for some AI 
paradigms, such as Blackboard sys- 



200 B YTE • APRIL I985 



ARCHITECTURES 



terns and Production systems that (in 
their current form) rely on memory for 
communication between tasks. 

This is not to say that there are no 
opportunities for spreading LISP-Iike 
processing across hundreds of pro- 
cessors. There are many techniques 
other than a single shared-memory 
system for connecting processors. 
More realistic areas of research in- 
clude the spreading of parallel in- 
ference computation via techniques 
of and, or, and stream parallelism. The 
point is that all of these techniques 
incur some overhead and you cannot 
simply solve the parallel-computation 
problem by saying that arguments to 
functions should be evaluated in 
parallel. You must first study hardware 
technology to determine at what grain 
sizes parallelism is feasible and then 
figure out how to make Al-language 
compilers decompose programs into 
the appropriate-size pieces. 

Custom VLSI 

One of the principal hopes for more 
efficient future computation is the use 
of custom VLSI hardware to ac- 
celerate particular functions. The ideal 
functions for silicon implementation 
should be current bottlenecks in AI 
systems and generic to many AI tasks. 
Four of the most important classes of 



operations that fit this description are 
symbolic matching of abstract objects, 
semantic associative memory, paral- 
lel-processor communication, and 
signal-to-symbol processing, 

Matching and Fetching 

Matching two objects is a general and 
pervasive operation. Most AI lan- 
guages define one or more match func- 
tions on their structured data types 
(such as frames). Some of these 
match functions are very ad hoc (thus 
supposedly flexible), but others are 
subsets or supersets of unification. If 
significant support for matching is to 
be provided in hardware, the match 
function must have well-defined 
semantics. 

Al-language objects can be com- 
plexly structured and used to repre- 
sent semantic knowledge. The objects 
can contain embedded pattern- 
matching variables that are given 
bindings as a side effect of the match 
operation. Thus the matching of these 
objects is complex. To give the flavor 
of the matching process, I'll present 
a short description of the unification 
matching function. (For a more exact 
description, see any good description 
of the Prolog language.) Matching is 
best described by recursively defining 
the semantics of the match operation: 



1. If the two objects to be matched 
are structured (nonscalar) objects, 
recursively match their subcom- 
ponents (or "slots"). The two objects 
are said to match if and only if all 
pairs of slots match. Otherwise, the 
objects do not match, and any side ef- 
fects of the matching process must be 
undone. 

2. If the two objects to be matched 
are scalar objects (integers, floating- 
point numbers, atoms, symbols, char- 
acters, etc.), then the match function 
reduces to simple equality. 

3. If one of the two objects to be 
matched is a pattern-matching vari- 
able, the match operation must check 
the variable's binding state. If the 
variable already has been bound to 
a value, the match operation con- 
tinues using the value in place of the 
variable. If the variable has no current 
binding, it is bound to the value of the 
object against which it was being 
matched, and the match succeeds. 

4. If both of the objects to be 
matched are unbound pattern- 
matching variables, then one is bound 
to the other as a placeholder for 
possible future bindings. If either 
variable is later bound to a "real" 
value, then both variables will be 
bound to this value. 

{continued) 



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APRIL I985 -BYTE 



ARCHITECTURES 



The match operation produces a 
binary result: Did the two objects 
match successfully or not? Successful 
matches produce the bindings of 
pattern-matching variables necessary 
to make the two objects identical in 
as general a way as possible. 

Many AI languages augment this 
match operation with checks for cir- 
cularity in the list structure (the "oc- 
cure check"), segment matches 
(similar to Snobol's), and the matching 
of sets and bags. 

When a match function is applied 



to a database of objects, the opera- 
tion is called fetching. In this case 
matching becomes the inner loop 
operation, and this is a context in 
which matching should be optimized. 
An ideal solution would integrate 
matching circuitry with memory cir- 
cuitry so that fetching would become 
a memory access of a content- 
addressable memory (CAM). The 
choice of match function is critical. Tb 
obtain reasonable memory densities, 
the relative silicon area of match cir- 
cuitry cannot overwhelm that of the 



memory circuitry. Unfortunately full 
unification and more complex match 
functions require too much circuitry 
to be built into memory cells. But if 
a formal subset of unification could 
be built in, then the CAM could act 
as a prefilter function for unification. 
The primary source of unification 
complexity is the maintenance of the 
binding environment. The match func- 
tion of mock unification resembles full 
unification except that all variables are 
treated as "don't cares" and no bind- 

{continued) 



FAIM-1 Project Overview 



Our goal is to produce a high-per- 
formance symbolic multiprocessor, 100 
or more times faster than current 
machines in common use (e.g., the DEC 
VAX- 11/780) to meet the voracious 
computational demands of future arti- 
ficial-intelligence applications. 

The FA1M-1 (Fairchild Artificial In- 
telligence Machine) is a multiprocessor 
system consisting of a number of iden- 
tical processing elements called hec- 
tagons interconnected by a communica- 
tion network. Each hectagon is a com- 
plete computer capable of sequentially 
executing a compiled program that is 
stored in its local memory. Hectagons 
communicate with each other via mes- 
sages that are sent through communi- 
cation ports. A hectagon has six ports 
that may be active concurrently. 

The FAIM-I architecture permits the 
connection of arbitrary numbers of 
hectagon processing elements in a 
hexagonal-mesh topology. The ensem- 
ble of hectagons is capable of exploit- 
ing very large levels of concurrent 
multiprocessing and as such should 
provide an extremely attractive target 
machine for future concurrent AI ap- 
plications due to its performance. 
Moreover, each individual hectagon is 
itself a concurrent processor com- 
posed of six modular sybsystems, each 
of which provides an important level 
of support for symbolic computation. 

A hectagon is composed of six self- 
timed subsystems named FRISC, 
SRAM. ISM. CxAM. SPUN, and Post 
Office. Three of these subsystems (ISM, 
CxAM, and SRAM) are specialized 



memory systems that provide "in- 
telligent" storage, while the other 
systems support inter-hectagon com- 
munication (Post Office), processing 
(FRISC), and unification (SPUN). 

FRISC: The "fanatically reduced in- 
struction set computer" component of 
the hectagon corresponds to the cen- 
tral processing unit in a conventional 
computer. It is a stack-oriented ma- 
chine with a 20-bit word composed of 
a 16-bit data field and 4-bit tag field. 
Tag bits and associated tag-handling 
hardware support generic operations. 
SRAM: The FRISC views most data 
structures as objects: a conventional 
memory with a small finite-state ma- 
chine attached to it (collectively called 
the SRAM) provides an object-oriented 
memory system for the FRISC For ex- 
ample, using the data tag bits the 
SRAM can chase a pointer chain to 
retrieve an object requested by the 
FRISC. 

ISM: The "instruction stream memory" 
subsystem delivers instructions to the 
processor at high speed. Thus, the nor- 
mal address calculation activities that 
have traditionally been the processor's 
responsibility are the ISM's job. 
CxAM: The "context-addressable 
memory" subsystem provides direct 
hardware support for important pat- 
tern-matching functions inherent in 
symbolic programs. The structure of 
both entries and queries in the CxAM 
is an S-expression. Therefore, each slot 
can either be a structure or an atom. 
Atoms can be symbols, numbers, vari- 



ables, or don't cares. The CxAM re- 
sponds to four commands: Find Match. 
Give Match, Delete Structure, and Add 
Structure. The CxAM manages its own 
free space and removes garbage auto- 
matically. 

SPUN: The "streamed pipeline unifier" 
supplies direct hardware support for 
logic programming. The CxAM finds 
the next rule or set of rules to be tried 
but does not perform full unification 
since its match function does not con- 
sider variable bindings. The SPUN unit 
takes the query and the streamed set 
of matched structures, detects which 
variables still need to be matched, 
fetches the binding in the current con- 
text from the SRAM, and completes 
the unification. This may entail binding 
a variable, in which case the SPUN unit 
must post this binding back in the 
SRAM. More complex structure manip- 
ulation requires the SPUN to interrupt 
the FRISC for services. 
Post Office: Hectagons communicate 
by sending messages to each other; it 
is the duty of the Post Office to pro- 
vide autonomous communication sup- 
port for its hectagon. If a message's 
destination is not one of the sender's 
six neighboring hectagons, the Post Of- 
fice will route the message to its 
destination by sending the message to 
a neighbor that is generally in the direc- 
tion of the destination. 

Conceptually messages may be of 
arbitrary length. In fact, each message 
is broken up and sent as a sequence 
of fixed-length packets. 



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Inquiry 241 



ARCHITECTURES 



ing list is formed. In terms of the 
definition given above, steps 3 and 4 
would be replaced with null opera- 
tions—variables are just treated as 
"always match" objects. Mock unifica- 
tion is the most powerful subset of 
unification that is state-free. Therefore, 
mock unification is a suitable can- 
didate for integration into VLSI mem- 
ory. Associative-memory systems that 
utilize mock unification as their match 
function are called CxAMs: context- 
addressable memories. 

From a hardware point of view, de- 
signing associative-memory architec- 
tures involves a resource trade-off 
between processing and memory: 
The more hardware devoted to 
"matching," the more data that can be 
examined in parallel, leading to faster 



BITS EQed /( nanosecond *mm2) 
4 



CxAM-3: HCP 15K BITS/mm2 




CxAM-2 



12 3 4 15 

K BITS/mm2 



Figure I : A graph of the range of hit 
and search-power densities for a QAM 
design. 



search time per bit of storage. But 
conversely, the more matching hard- 
ware there is, the smaller the amount 
of hardware that can be devoted to 
data memory and the lower the den- 
sity of the associative memory. The 
data-path bandwidth of the match 
hardware is also a factor in making 
these trade-offs. Therefore, associa- 
tive memories can be rated by their 
storage density (bits stored per unit 
of silicon area) and search throughput 
(bits searched per unit of time per unit 
of silicon area). 

I examined two classes of associa- 
tive memory in which the match func- 
tion is mock unification. One inte- 
grated the matching circuitry with 
memory circuitry, the other was hash- 
based. Hashing was considered 



MINIMUM SYSTEM CONFIGURATION (BITS) 


100M 
10M 

1M 








HASH BASED CxAM 


100K 






10K 




SEARCH BASED CxAM 


IK 


r 








4 8 12 16 




K BITS/mm2 



Figure 2: The minimum-usable-size 
system for use with the hashing QAM. 
Note that the minimum is too large for 
some applications. 



T^ble 2: A list of AUanguage match operations and data types arranged in 
order of complexity. 

Match Hierarchy 


Match Operation 


Object Type 


Compare Instructions 


32-bit data object 


LISP EQ Function 


Atomic LISP objects 


LISP EQUAL Function 


S-Expressions 


Mock Unification 


S-Expression with don't cares 


Unification 


S-Expression with matching variables 


Unification & Predicates 


S-Expression with variables/predicates 


Arbitrary User Code 


arbitrary user representation objects 



because in many applications in the 
past software hashing has dominated 
CAM technology (reference 7). In 
more detail the two classes are 

1. Brute-force search: The contents of 
a memory are exhaustively searched 
by some number of parallel match 
units. For this class of search a custom 
VLSI mock-unification-memory archi- 
tecture was designed. 

2. Hashing: Objects to be fetched are 
hashed, and then the collision list is 
serially searched by a match unit. A 
proposed VLSI implementation of 
PEARLs hashing scheme (called the 
HCP, or hash coprocessor) served as 
an embodiment of hash-based 
searching. In this system the bit 
storage is conventional DRAM. 

Figures 1 and 2 present graphs of 
CxAM design-space trade-offs. Figure 
1 displays the range of bit and search- 
power densities. The hash-based 
CxAM has a single operating point 
because the fetch time is essentially 
independent of memory size as is the 
density. The search-based CxAM has 
a variable range because one can vary 
the relative proportions of storage 
and processing in such architectures. 
The two lines represent two different 
search-based architectures. One has 
inherently better bit density but over 
most of the design space this advan- 
tage is negated by an inherently 
worse search throughput. However, 
neither design completely dominates 
the other— a choice between the two 
will depend on the relative storage- 
density/match-throughput balance 
desired. Figure 2 displays the defect 
of the hashing CxAM. The minimum- 
usable-size system is too large for 
some applications. 

Thus the trade-offs between these 
two schemes turn out to be in den- 
sity and minimum usable size. As a 
representative data point, both tech- 
niques could perform a mock unifica- 
tion of their entire local memory con- 
tents for an average query (an S- 
expression of length 16) in 5 micro- 
seconds. The density of the search- 
based CxAM was about eight times 
worse than that of conventional 
single-transistor DRAM. The hashing 



204 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 25 



Little Board™ $349' 



ARCHITECTURES 



scheme used conventional DRAMs 
and so had high density. But the 
minimum configuration of a hash- 
based CxAM memory system using 
standard 256K-byte DRAMs is 10 
megabits, whereas the search-based 
CxAM can be configured for much 
smaller system storage sizes. 

This extremely high speed of 5 
microseconds portends greatly in- 
creased efficiency for systems bottle- 
necked by database fetch time. But 
which technique to use is very depen- 
dent upon grain size. If you are con- 
structing a large nonparallel machine, 
a bank of HCPs and conventional 
DRAMs works well. But for an array 
of small-grain processors with on-chip 
memories, the search-based CxAM 
approach is more tractable. 

Combining a CxAM with software- 
based routines provides a range of 
tailored matching services with sliding 
power/price/throughput trade-offs. 
The FAIM-1 machine provides an ex- 
ample of this design. For each of 
thousands of processors, there is 
parallel CxAM hardware for mock uni- 
fication, a single, hard-wired, serial 
pipelined full unifier, and software 
support for post-unification matching 
features (attached predicates and 
demons), With such a hardware/soft- 
ware hierarchy, simple matches (like 
LISP's equal) run fast, whereas more 
complex matching services (such as 
KRLs— see reference 1) cost more in 
time due to the software component. 

In summary, matching is a common 
operation ripe for VLSI implementa- 
tion, but the complexity of match 
functions varies. T&ble 2 arranges a 
simple list of match operations and 
data types in order of complexity. 
Successful high-performance AI ma- 
chines will have to carefully decom- 
pose these functions into hardware 
and software components. 

Parallei^Processor 
Communications 

As already mentioned, processors 
working in parallel cannot communi- 
cate objects and messages by sharing 
a large common memory. Some sort 
of special message-passing (and for- 
warding) hardware is essential for ef- 



ficient handling of the traffic. In many 
general-purpose parallel processors, 
interprocessor communication is the 
computational bottleneck. 

Signal-to-Symbol 
Processing 

Despite all the attention given to 
speeding up high-level symbolic com- 
putation, within some AI applications 
the main processing bottleneck has 
been in the very-low-level processing 
of raw sensory data. Within many vi- 
sion systems, 90 percent or more of 
the run time may be incurred in the 
initial segmentation of the visual 
scene from pixels to low-level sym- 
bolic constructs (reference 16). More- 
over, limitations of the higher-level vi- 
sion processing can usually be traced 
to an inadequate initial segmentation 
(reference 4). Similar problems arise 
in many speech systems. In such 
cases, you should look to special- 
purpose VLSI processors to directly 
attack the problem. Examples include 
special image-processing chips (refer- 
ence 14), and speech chips (reference 
2). As array processors have shown, 
for these special processors to be 
usable by programmers they need to 
be very well integrated with the other 
hardware and software components 
of the system and as transparent as 
possible. Since most AI programmers 
are not good microcode hackers, you 
are in trouble if this is the only inter- 
face with a special device. 

Conclusion 

Opportunities for increased efficien- 
cy abound at all levels of AI systems 
if we only look, but to obtain the 
desired throughput increases all the 
potential improvements outlined here 
must be made. We must make hard 
trade-offs between traditional AI pro- 
gramming practices and the discipline 
necessary to construct algorithms that 
can make effective use of large multi- 
processors. We must compile our AI 
languages, and these compilers must 
influence instruction-set design. Key 
computational bottlenecks in AI pro- 
cessing must be attacked with custom 
silicon. There is a real need to use 

{continued) 




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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 205 



ARCHITECTURES 



concurrency at all levels where it 
makes sense, but the overhead must 
be analyzed realistically. ■ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
The author would like to acknowledge the 
contributions of members of the FAIM-1 
project: Ken Olum for his collaboration on 
the instruction-set benchmarks, Ian Robin- 



son and Erik Brunvand for their VLSI 
CxAM designs, and Al Davis for overall ar- 
chitectural discussions. 

REFERENCES 

I. Bo brow, D, and T. Winograd. An Over- 
view of KRLrO, a Knowledge Representa- 
tion Language." Cognitive Science, vol. 1, no. 

1, 1977. 

2. Burleson, W. "A Programmable Bit-Serial 




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Call or write today for more information: 
Systems Strategies Inc 225 West 34th St. New York, NY 10001 . (212) 279-8400. 



<3> 



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An AGS Company 

Experience... the main link in communications software 



Signal Processing Chip." SM Thesis, MIT 
Department of Electrical Engineering and 
Computer Science, 1983. 

3. Deering, ML I. Faletti, and R/Wilensky. 
"PEARL--A Package for Efficient Access 
for Representations in LISP' Proc. 1JCAI-81 , 
Vancouver, B.C., Canada, August 1981, 
pages 930-932. 

4. Deering, M., and C Collins. "Real-Time 
Natural Scene Analysis for a Blind Pros- 
thesis." Proc. IJCAI-81, Vancouver, B.C., 
Canada, August 1981, pages 704-709. 

5. Deering, M., and K. Olum. "Lisp and 
Processor Benchmarks." Unpublished 
FLAIR Technical Report, March 1984. 

6. Fateman, R. "Is a Lisp Machine Different 
from a Fortran Machine?" S1GSAM, vol. 12, 
no. 3, August 1978, pages 8-11. 

7. Feldman, J., and P Rovner. "An Algol 
Based Associative Language." Commun. 
ACM, vol. 12, no. 8, August 1969. 

8. Foderaro, J. "The Franz Lisp System." 
Unpublished memo in Berkeley 42 UNIX 
Distribution, September 1983. 

9. Gabriel, R., and J. McCarthy. "Queue- 
based Multi-processing Lisp." Preprint, 
1984. 

10. Gajski, D, D Pradua, D. Kuck, and R. 
Kuhn. "A Second Opinion on Data Flow 
Machines and Languages." IEEE Computer, 
vol. 15, no. 2, February 1982, pages 
58-69. 

11. Genesereth, M. "An overview of Meta- 
Level Architecture." Proc. AAA1-83, 
Washington, DC, 1983. 

12. Griss, M., and E. Benson. "Current 
Status of a Portable Lisp Compiler" 
SIGPLAN, vol. 17, no. 6, in Proc. SIGPLAN 
'82 Symposium on Compiler Construction, 
Boston, MA, June 1982, pages 276-283. 

13. Knight, T, Jr., D. Moon, J. Holloway, and 
G. Steele, Jr. "CADR." MIT AI Memo 528, 
March 1981. 

14. Kurokawa, H., K. Matsumoto, M. 
Iwashita, and T. Nukiyama. "The Architec- 
ture and Performance of Image Pipeline 
Processor." Proc. VLSI '83, Troncjheim, Nor- 
way August 1983, pages 275,-284. 

1 5. Lampson, B., and K. Pier. "A Processor 
for a High-Performance Personal Com- 
puter." Proc. Itk Symposium on Computer Ar- 
chitecture, SIGArch/lEEE, La Baule, May 
1980. pages 146-160. 

16. Perkins, W. "A Model Based Vision Sys- 
tem for Industrial Parts." IEEE Trans. Corn- 
put., vol. C-27, 1978, pages 126-143. 

17. Warren, D H. "Applied Logic— Its Uses 
and Implementation as a Programming 
Tool." Ph.D. Dissertation, University of 
Edinburgh, 1977. Available as Technical 
Note 290, Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI 
International. 



206 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 378 



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© Eastman Kodak Company, 1985 



Inquiry 134 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 207 



'Despite the recent press notices, 
multiuser microcomputers aren't 

anything new!" 



This is the first in a series of 
discussions with Rod Coleman, 
President of Stride Micro 
(formerly Sage Computer) on 
the 68000 multiuser market 
and its current environment. 

Q: Why do you say that? 
RC: "The technology to build a 
high performance multiuser sys- 
tem has been around for five 
years. And while some of the 
leaders in this industry have been 
pretending that micro multiuser 
didn't exist, we've been shipping 
complete systems for nearly three 
years. The benefits of multiuser 
are undeniable; it is more cost ef- 
fective, and offers greater flexibil- 
ity and utility. But until just re- 
cently, the marketing pressure to 
be compatible instead of being 
better, has blinded the industry." 

Q: What do you mean? 
RC: "Well, for example, the 
Motorola 68000 processor intro- 
duced 16/32- bit technology to the 
personal computer world a long 
time ago. It was fully capable of 




A surprising feature is 
compatibility. Everybody 
talks about it, but nobody 
does anything about it" 



meeting high performance and 
multiuser design requirements in 
1980. Instead of this trend taking 
off, most energy was spent pro- 
moting 8088/8086 products that 



were clearly inferior from a tech- 
nical point of view. This phenom- 
enon leads me to believe that they 
will soon rewrite the old proverb: 
'Build a better mousetrap and the 
world will beat a path to your 
door,' but only if they can find the 
way through the marketing fog." 
Q: Are things changing now? 
RC: "Yes and no. With the busi- 
ness world starting to take more 
and more interest in microcompu- 
ter solutions, the advantages of a 
solid multiuser system couldn't be 
kept hidden forever; companies 
like ours and a few others were 
beginning to make a dent. Instead 
of taking a fresh approach, some 
of the newest multiuser offerings 
will probably only give the tech- 
nology an undeserved black eye! 
Multiuser is far more than the 
ability to plug in more terminals. 
It involves things like machine 
compatibility, fast processors, 
adequate memory, large storage 
capacities, backup features, net- 
working, and operating system 
flexibility." 

Q: Is this what makes the new 
Stride 400 Series different? 
RC: "Exactly. That sounds self- 
serving, but it's true. Today a 
number of companies are intro- 
ducing their first multiuser sys- 
tem. We've been building and 
shipping multiuser machines for 
almost three years. We know the 
pitfalls, we've fallen into some of 
them. But we have learned from 
our mistakes." 
Q: Give me some examples. 
RC: A hard disk is almost manda- 
tory for any large multiuser in- 
stallation. Yet, backing up a hard 
disk can be a nightmare if you 
only have floppies to work with. 
That's why we've added a tape 
backup option to all the larger 
Stride 400 Series machines. It's 
irresponsible for a manufacturer 
to market a multiuser system 
without such backup. Another 
good lesson was bus design. We 
started with one of our own de- 
signs, but learned that it's impor- 
tant not only to find a bus that is 
powerful, but also one that has 
good support and a strong future 
to serve tomorrow's needs. We 




"The marketing pressure 

to be compatible 

instead of being better, 

has blinded the industry." 



think the VMEbus is the only de- 
sign that meets both criteria and 
thus have made it a standard fea- 
ture of every Stride 400 Series 
machine." 

Q: What are some of the other 
unique features of the 400 Series? 
RC: "A surprising feature is com- 
patibility. Everybody talks about 
it, but nobody does anything 
about it. Our systems are com- 
pletely compatible with each other 
from the 420 model starting at " 
$2900, through the 440, on to the 
powerful 460 which tops out near 
$60,000. Each system can talk to 
the others via the standard built-in 
local area network. Go ahead and 
compare this with others in the in- 
dustry. You'll find their little ma- 
chines don't talk to their big ones, 
or that the networking and multi- 
user are incompatible, or that they 
have different processors or 
operating systems, and so on." 
Q: When you were still known as 
Sage Computer, you had a reputa- 
tion for performance, is that still 
the case with the new Stride 400 
Series? 

RC: "Certainly, that's our calling 
card: Performance By Design.* 
Our new systems are actually fas- 
ter; our standard processor is a 10 
MHz 68000 running with no wait 



states. That gives us a 25% in- 
crease over the Sage models. 
And, we have a 12 MHz pro- 
cessor as an option. Let me add 
that speed isn't the only way to 
judge performance. I think it is 
also measured in our flexibility. 
We support a dozen different 
operating systems, not just one. 
And our systems service a wide 
variety of applications from the 
garage software developer to the 
corporate consumer running high 
volume business applications." 
Q: Isn't that the same thing all 
manufacturers say in their ads? 
RC: "Sure it is. But to use another 
over used- term, 'shop around'. 
We like to think of our systems as 
'full service 68000 supermicro- 
computers.' Take a look at every- 
one else's literature and then 
compare. When you examine 
cost, performance, flexibility, and 
utility, we don't think there's any- 
one else in the 
race. Maybe 
that's why we've 
shipped and 
installed more 
multiuser 68000 
systems than 
anyone else." 




Formerly Sage Computer 

For more information on Stride or 
the location of the nearest Stride 
Dealer call or write us today. 
We'll also send you a free copy of 
our 32 page product catalog. 

Corporate Offices: 
4905 Energy Way 
Reno, NV 89502 
(702)322-6868 

Regional Offices: 
Boston: (617) 229-6868 
Dallas: (214) 392-7070 



208 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 367 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



THE LISP 
REVOLUTION 



A LITTLE MORE than five years ago, 
a friend from a major computer cor- 
poration came into my office to talk 
about developing artificial-intelligence 
(AI) packages. "How should we get 
started?" he asked. My answer was 
gloomy: 

First, get together a million 
dollars or so and buy one of 
Digital Equipment Corporation's 
(DEC'S) big mainframe com- 
puters. Next, decide what 
dialect of LISP to run, choosing 
from MacLISP. InterLISR Por- 
table Standard LISP, Franz LISP, 
and many others. Then try to 
get a tape from somewhere and 
find someone who can install it. 
You'll probably find that the 
documentation is not particular- 
ly complete and software main- 
tenance will be a problem. And 
if you bet on the wrong dialect 
now, changing to another will 
certainly take a lot of work. 

Tbday, by contrast, I wrote this arti- 
cle using an editor written in LISP. The 
editor is part of a $500 LISP system 
that I use on a $4000 personal com- 
puter. I wrote and tested a program 
in the $500 LISP that I will be able to 



by Patrick H. Winston 

LISP is no longer 
limited to a lucky few 



run without change on a supersophis- 
ticated, superpowerful Symbolics 
3670. TWo things have made this prog- 
ress possible. First, the recent avail- 
ability of personal computers with 
512K bytes of memory, which is 
enough to learn LISP and to start ex- 
periencing the excitement of its appli- 
cations in AI. Second, Common LISP 
emerged as the heir apparent to all 
previous LISP dialects. The same 
Common LISP program you write on 
a personal computer can be trans- 
ferred later to a heftier machine, as 
needs and resources permit. 

Data General, DEC, Hewlett- 
Packard, LISP Machine, Symbolics 
Inc., Tfexas Instruments, and Xerox all 
sell versions of Common LISP for 
their own machines, and Common 
LISP is available for personal com- 
puters as well. Suddenly, serious LISP 
programming is no longer limited to 
a lucky few. 

LISP Means Symbol 
Manipulation 

The reason that LISP is different from 
most other languages is that LISP 
focuses on symbol manipulation 
rather than on numbers. To highlight 
the difference, I'll lay out some ex- 



amples of symbol manipulation taken 
from the Mover program, one that 
moves toy blocks like those shown in 
figure 1. Specialized problem-solving 
procedures inside the Mover program 
enable it to get rid of obstacles that 
are in the way. These problem-solving 
procedures use and maintain informa- 
tion about what each object supports. 
For example, B3 supports B1 and B4. 
The Mover program knows this 
because the symbols B1 and B4 are 
found in a list obtained from B3 by 
the get instruction: 

(get 'B3 things-supported) 
-> (B1 B4) 

Now suppose we have attached the 
list of things that B3 supports to a 
variable called obstacles. LISP's 
symbol-manipulation primitives allow 
for quick answers to basic questions: 

How many obstacles are there? 
(length obstacles) — > 2 

{continued) 

Patrick Henry Winston (MIT Artificial In- 
telligence laboratory, 545 Technology Square, 
Cambridge, MA 02139) has a B.S., M.S., 
and Ph.D. from MIT. He does research on 
computer learning and directs the Artificial 
Intelligence laboratory at MIT 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 209 



LISP REVOLUTION 



What's the first obstacle? 

(first obstacles) — > B1 

Is Bl an obstacle? 

(member B1 obstacles) — > t 

Is B4 the first obstacle? 

(eq B4 (first obstacles)) — > nil 

Note that t is LISP notation for true, 
and nil is LISP notation for false. Other 
symbol-manipulation primitives 
facilitate changes to the list and test 
to see if it is empty: 

Remove B4 from the list: 
(sett obstacles 

(remove B4 obstacles)) — > (B1) 
Add B7 to the list: 
(setf obstacles 

(cons B7 obstacles)) — > (B7 B1) 
Is the obstacle list empty? 
(endp obstacles) — NIL 

Once changed, the obstacle list can 
be reattached to the symbol B3 from 



which it came: 

(setf (get B3 things-supported) 
obstacles) 

All these questions and changes are 
simple, low-level examples of the sym- 
bol manipulation for which LISP is 
famous. Similar symbol-manipulation 
feats enable the Mover program to 
keep track of what is done. Mover's 
history-maintaining procedures con- 
tain instructions that examine and 
change symbolic expressions describ- 
ing every move. Those symbolic de- 
scriptions make it possible to answer 
questions like: Did you move block 
B7? How did you move block B7? 
Why did you move block B7? When 
did you move block B7? 

Thus symbol manipulation enables 
Mover to exhibit a humanlike intro- 
spective ability to explain itself. Sym- 
bol manipulation is so intimately as- 



Listing I : A procedure found inside the Mover program illustrating the problem- 
reduction heuristic. 



(defun put-at (object place) 
(grasp object) 
(move-object) 
(ungrasp object)) 



; Define the PUT-AT procedure. 

; Grasp the object— may require moving obstacles. 

;Move the object— easy. 

;Move the object— easy, too. 



- TRAY. THE BLOCKS WORLD 



SLIDE 9 OF 10- 

11 



Bl 



H 



B3 



B5 


l-l 
l-.l 


B8 


B6 



THE OBJECTIVE HERE IS TO PUT BLOCK B6 ON TOP OF BLOCK B3. CALLED FOR 
BY THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTION: 

tPROGN (PUT-ON ' B6 ' B3) ' DONE). 

SPACE-NEXT SLIDE 



Figure 1 : A picture of the blocks world in which the Mover program operates. 



sociated with AI, it's no wonder that 
LISP is the key language used in AI 
applications. 

Computer Professionals 
Should Know LISP 

LISP experts argue endlessly about 
why LISP remains the primary lan- 
guage for AI and about why it is 
becoming a language for general- 
purpose programming as well. Some 
say LISP's primitives and features ex- 
plain all. Others claim LISP owes its 
power to its tradition of interactive 
programming and powerful debug- 
ging tools. Still others cite its simple 
hierarchy-encouraging procedure- 
definition mechanism. {Editor's note: for 
a short introduction to LISP, see "LISP for 
the IBM Personal Computer" by \ordan Bortz 
and John Diamant, }uly 1984 BYTE, page 
281.| 

Increasingly, LISP is becoming a 
more generally used language, not 
strictly limited to applications in AI. 
Because many of the systems of AI 
are large, LISP has become a lan- 
guage suited to large-system imple- 
mentation. For example, it has been 
used with outstanding success in 
building the entire operating systems 
of the LISP machines now offered by 
a growing number of major com- 
panies. 

Such successes are one reason why 
many computer-science educators 
believe that an understanding of LISP 
is de rigueur for computer science 
majors. Another is that LISP has been 
proven an excellent language for il- 
lustrating computing concepts. At 
MIT, for example, a dialect of LISP 
called Scheme has been used for 
years as the primary language in the 
basic introductory subject on pro- 
gramming languages. 

LISP Is Both Old and New 

Before you learn any computer lan- 
guage, you should ask if the language 
is too old to be modern or too new 
to be mature. What about LISP? Is it 
too old or too new? Many people are 
surprised to learn that the history of 
LISP goes back to the late 1950s, 
making LISP nearly as old as FOR- 

{continued) 



210 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



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LISP REVOLUTION 



TRAN. Unlike FORTRAN, however, the 
LISP of today is much different from 
the LISP of 2 5 or even 5 years ago. 
Why did FORTRAN calcify while LISP 
continued to evolve vigorously? The 
principal reason is that FORTRAN was 
suited to commercial applications ear- 
ly on, whereas LISP was not. LISP re- 



quires a lot of memory and in the 
days when memory was expensive, 
there was no commercial purpose 
served by early standardization of 
LISP Consequently, LISP dialects pro- 
liferated, LISP innovations thrived, 
and cross-fertilizations from one 
dialect of LISP to another kept each 



MAKE -SPACE FIND- SPACE 




^GET-RID-OF- 
PUT-AT I CLEAR -TOP 




MOVE-HAND 







PLACE 


X 


Y 


/ 




START 


GOAL 


START 





2 


\ 


/ \ 


A 


2 





A 


-B C 


B 


5 









c 


10 









D 


2 


4 






E 


7 


4 






GOAL 


7 


2 



Figure 2: Graphical description of how 
all the procedures in Mover work together. 



Figure 3: An example of a maplike net. 



(make-rule identifyl 6 






if 


((> 


animal) is 


a(> type)) 






((< 


animal) is 


a parent of (> 


child)) 


then 


((< 


child) is a 


(< type))) 





Figure 4: A rule ready for inclusion in a USP-based animal-recognition system. 



Rule IDENTIFY1 asserts (ROBBIE IS A MAMMAL) 


because 


(ROBBIE HAS HAIR) 


Rule IDENTIFY5 asserts (ROBBIE IS A CARNIVORE) 


because 


(ROBBIE EATS MEAT) 


Rule IDENTIFY9 asserts (ROBBIE IS A CHEETAH) 


because 


(ROBBIE HAS DARK SPOTS) 




(ROBBIE HAS TAWNY COLOR) 




(ROBBIE IS A CARNIVORE) 




(ROBBIE IS A MAMMAL) 


Rule IDENTIFY16 asserts (BOZO IS A MAMMAL) 


because 


(ROBBIE IS A PARENT OF BOZO) 




(ROBBIE IS A MAMMAL) 


Rule IDENTIFY16 - R' - F 


because 


(ROBBIE IS A PARENT OF BOZO) 




(ROBBIE IS A CARNIVORE) 


Rule IDENTIFY16 asserts (BOZO IS A CHEETAH) 


because 


(ROBBIE IS A PARENT OF BOZO) 




(ROBBIE IS A CHEETAH) 



Figure 5: Output fragment showing how a forward-chaining rule moves from facts to 

conclusion. 



about as powerful as any other. Now, 
however, memory is relatively cheap, 
which is attracting many commercial 
users to LISP, thus increasing the need 
for a standardized LISP for applica- 
tions and instruction. Fortunately, the 
2 5 years LISP has had to mature 
means that many new features have 
been incorporated into the Common 
LISP standard. Here are some of my 
favorites: 

• a powerful structure-defining 
primitive that automatically generates 
procedures for accessing record fields 

• a generalized assignment primitive 
that works for values, properties, ar- 
rays, and structures 

• a flexible template-filling mechan- 
ism that enables complicated expres- 
sions to be constructed easily and 
transparently 

• a strong macrocomputer capability 
that enables users to dream up their 
own syntax 

• a rich variety of argument-passing 
options, including optional arguments 
with specifiable defaults as well as 
arguments associated with param- 
eters by way of key words 

• a modern, stream-oriented input/ 
output (I/O) system 

How to Learn LISP 

I think the best way to learn LISP is 
interactively. There are quite a 
number of reasons why such inter- 
active learning is good. For instance: 
It's fun to do on-line puzzles; it's bor- 
ing to do exercises in a book. It's 
easy to demystify difficult points by 
trying things out immediately. It's 
motivating to watch interesting pro- 
grams work. 

In any case, one factor stands undis- 
puted: LISP programming is fun. Let's 
look at a few taken from an on-line, 
interactive instruction package known 
as the San Marco LISP Explorer. 
{Author's note: The San Marco LISP Ex- 
plorer package is sold by Gold Hill Computers 
Inc., 163 Harvard St., Cambridge, MA 
02139.| We will examine the Mover 
blocks-manipulation program, the 
search program, the rule-based ex- 

{continued) 



212 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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APRIL !985 'BYTE 213 



LISP REVOLUTION 



Listing 2: A search program that finds paths through maplike nets such as the 
one in figure 3. 



(defun start-depth (start goal)) 
(depth (list (list start)) 
goal)) 



;Make a one-partial-path queue. 
;Pass along name of goal place. 



(defun depth (queue goal) 
;;lf no other partial paths, quit: 
(if (null queue) 
nil 

;;Otherwise, if goal found, quit: 
(if (equal goal (first (last (first queue)))) 
(first queue) 

;;Otherwise, expand first partial path 
;;and add to FRONT of queue: 
(depth (append (expand (first queue)) 
(rest queue)) 
goal))))) 

(defun expand (path) 
(let ((reversed- path (reverse path))) 
;;Turn the new partial paths right way around: 
(mapcar 'reverse 
;;Get rid of partial paths that close on themselves: 
(remove-if '(lambda (new- path) 

(member (first new- path) (rest new- path))) 
;;Make one new partial path for each neighbor: 
(mapcar '(lambda (neighbor) (cons neighbor reversed-path)) 
;;Get neighbors: 
(get (first reversed-path) 'neighbors)))))) 



Listing 3: The expression-matching procedure in any rule-based expert system 
must compare expressions and produce a list of pattern-match pairs. 



* (match '((> animal) is a (> type)) 
'(Robbie is a Cheetah) 
nil) 

((animal robbie) (type cheetah)) 



; First argument is a pattern. 

;Second argument is an assertion. 
Third is a list of prior pattern-match 
; pairs, none in this example. 
The answer— a list of pattern- matches. 



Listing 4: A matcher program for a rule-based expert system. 


(defun match (p d matches) 






(cond ((and (endp p) (endp d)) 




Succeed. 


(cond ((endp matches) t) 






(t matches))) 






((or (endp p) (endp d)) nil) 




Fail. 


((equal (first p) (first d)) 




Identical first elements. 


(match (rest p) (rest d) matches)) 




Match the rest. 


((atom (first p)) nil) 




Losing atom. 


((equal (first (first p)) ' >) 




Match > variable. 


(match (rest p) (rest d) 






(shove-value (second (first 


P)) 




(first d) 






matches))) 






((equal (first (first p)) '<) 




Substitute variable. 

[continued) 



pert system, and the natural-language 
interface. 

Planning 

in the Blocks World 

LISP programs are generally ex- 
amples of the problem-reduction 
heuristic; that is, to solve a hard prob- 
lem you must break it up into simpler 
subproblems. The problem-reduction 
heuristic can be seen in the simple 
Mover program. Listing 1 is a pro- 
cedure found inside the Mover pro- 
gram that breaks the problem of put- 
ting an object somewhere into three 
subproblems: grasp it, move it, and 
ungrasp it. Figure 2 is a graphical 
description of how all of the pro- 
cedures in Mover work together. LISP 
encourages the creation of layered 
programs, like Mover, wherein big 
problems are broken down succes- 
sively into smaller and smaller 
problems. 

Searching 

in the Map World 

Search techniques are commonly 
used in AI to solve problems. Here 
are some examples: 

• finding a route through a highway 
net 

• finding a way to put together a 
motor 

• understanding a written database 
request 

• learning to recognize a plant 
disease 

Abstractly, search problems all 
amount to finding a way through 
some sort of maplike net. Figure 3 is 
a sample of such a net. The goal is 
close to place E, but there is no direct 
connection; E is a dead end. There 
are two ways to go from B to the goal: 
directly, and indirectly, through C. 
Listing 2 shows a page of LISP defin- 
ing a search program that finds paths 
through these maplike nets. Although 
you won't understand much of the 
program if you don't know LISP yet, 
you may enjoy looking at its overall 
structure and simplicity With a little 
more effort, you can define a search 

[continued) 



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LISP REVOLUTION 



(match (cons (pull-value (second (first p) matches) 
(rest p)) 
d 
matches))))) 

This matcher happens to use two auxiliary procedures: 

(defun pull-value (variable a-list) 
(second (assoc variable a-list))) 

(defun shove- value (variable item a-list) 
(append a-list (list (list variable item)))) 



Listing 5: A program that matches sentences against a suitable representation 
of semantic grammars and activates the appropriate search procedure. 

(record question 

((branch ((parse present) 

(branch (THE (parse attributes) OF (parse tools) 
(parse-result-if-end 
(report- attributes attributes tools))) 
((parse tools) S (parse attributes) 
(parse-result-if-end 
(report-attributes attributes tools))))) 
(HOW MANY METERS IS (parse tooll) FROM (parse tool2) 
(parse-result-if-end 
(report-distance tooll tool2))) 
(IDENTIFY (parse tools) 

(parse-result-if-end 

(report-identity tools))) 
(COUNT (parse tools) 

(parse-result-if-end 

(report-number tools)))))) 



i present 



OF 



i tools 



->0 



THE 1 attributes 

>0 >0-- - >0- 

I tool S 4 attributes 

>o >o >0 

HOW MANY METERS IS 1 tooll FROM 1 tool2 

• >0 >0 >0 >0 

IDENTIFY i tools 

>0 > 

COUNT i tools 

->0 - >0 



Figure 6: The top level of a semantic grammar capable of handling queries about the 
color, weight, length, and position of some tools. 




What are the weight, length, and color of the saw? 



i present THE i attributes 



OF i tools 



Figure 7: An example of a question that matches the top level of the semantic 
grammar in figure 6. 



procedure that finds the guararv 
teed-shortest path. 

Analysis 

in the Zoo World 

Rule-based expert systems are the 
hottest thing in the commercialization 
of AI. All of them are built on the idea 
that some kinds of knowledge can be 
reduced to simple rules. Figure 4 
shows one rule that is ready for inclu- 
sion in a LISP-based animal-recogni- 
tion system, which expresses the fact 
that an animal's children are animals 
of the same kind. LISP does not have 
any built-in primitives that handle 
such rules, but it is a splendid 
language in which to embed a rule- 
exploiting program. LISP'S symbol- 
manipulating power is well suited to 
the task of examining the symbols 
that make up a rule, comparing them 
to the symbols that make up the ex- 
isting facts, and reacting accordingly. 
One kind of rule-exploiting program 
is a forward-chaining rule interpreter, 
which is a program that uses rules to 
move forward from facts to conclu- 
sions. Figure 5 is an output fragment 
showing what such a program does 
with facts about Robbie, knowledge 
about the relationship between Rob- 
bie and Bozo, and a few rules. There 
is always an expression-matching pro- 
cedure buried inside any rule-based 
expert system like the animal- 
identification procedure. While the 
entire system is too lengthy to show, 
the matcher is short and straightfor- 
ward. Its task is to compare expres- 
sions and to produce a list of pattern- 
match pairs, as shown in listing 3. 
Listing 4 is the matcher program. 

Interaction 

in the Tool World 

The pattern matcher shown previous- 
ly is not just an important part of a 
rule-based system. It is also just about 
all you need to make the famous Doc- 
tor program, the one that pretends it 
is a psychiatrist responding with ap- 
parent sympathy as you pour your 
heart out over family traumas. More 
importantly, the pattern matcher has 
a family resemblance to natural-lan- 

{continued) 



216 BYTE • APRIL 1985 




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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 217 



LISP REVOLUTION 



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screwdriver from the big blue one? 
The top level of a semantic gram- 
mar capable of handling all these 
queries is shown in figure 6. A 
semantic-grammar interpreter finds 
paths through such a net using input 
sentences as a guide. Each branch 
marked with a > symbol requires 
traversal of a subnet. Each complete 
path from the entry to an exit is 
associated with its own data-search- 
ing procedure. For example the 
sentence in figure 7 matches the top- 
most path in the top-level net. Three 
subnets are traversed in addition to 
the top-level net. Once again, LISP'S 
symbol-manipulating power makes it 
easy to write a program that both 
matches sentences against a suitable 
representation of semantic grammars 
and activates the appropriate search 
procedures. Listing 5 shows what such 
a representation looks like when it 
is rendered in LISP-oriented nota- 
tion. 

Conclusion 

We really don't need any new ex- 
amples to demonstrate why profes- 
sionals need to know about LISP. The 
examples presented are all elemen- 
tary but they indicate the sorts of 
things done by their bigger brothers. 
LISP is the foundation for expert 
systems of all kinds, many of which 
have progressed far beyond the sim- 
ple rule-based paradigm. LISP is the 
language for most natural-language 
development efforts. Indeed, LISP is 
the language of choice for most peo- 
ple working in AI— supporting work 
that includes learning, instruction, 
speech, vision, robotics, and all sorts 
of reasoning. ■ 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Abelson, Harold, and Gerald Jay Sussman. 
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Pro- 
grams. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1984. 
Winston, Patrick H. Artificial Intelligence, 2nd 
ed. Reading, MA: Add i son-Wesley 1984. 
Winston, Patrick H.. and Berthold K. P. 
Horn. LISP. 2nd ed. Reading, MA: 
Addison-Wesley 1984. 
Winston, Patrick H.. and Karen A. 
Prendergast. The A I Business: The Commer- 
cial Uses of Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, 
MA: MIT Press, 1984. 

— Inquiry 239 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 219 




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Z-8— User defined registers 
names, standard Zilog and Z-80 
style support. Tec Hex output option. 
8748— standard Intel and Z-80 
style syntax supported. 
8051 —51 2 User defined register 
or addressable bit names. 
6800 Family — absolute or 
relocatable modes, all addressing 
modes supported. Motorola syntax 
compatible. Intel Hex or S-Record 
format output. 

6502— Standard syntax or Z-80 
type syntax supported, all 
addressing modes supported. 



220 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



















ZILOG 


• 


OLIVETTI 




Z80 


SYSTEM 8000 


IBM PC 


IBM PC 


M-20 




CP/M" 


UNIX 


MSDOS 


CP/M 86 


PCOS 


Z8000™ 


$299.50 








$299.50 


Z80 


99.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


Z8 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


8086/88 


199.50 


750.00 


99.50 


99.50 


199.50 


80186 


199.50 


750.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


8748 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


8044/51 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


8080 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


8085 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


8096 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


68020 


399.50 


750.00 


399.50 


399.50 


399.50 


68000,08,10 


299.50 


750.00 


299.50 


299.50 


299.50 


6800,02,08 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6801 ,03 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6804 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6805 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6809 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


32000 


399.50 


750.00 


399.50 


399.50 


399.50 


COPS400 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


NSC800 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6301 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6501/11 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


6502 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


65C02 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


1802 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


F8/3870 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


NEC7500 


199.50 


500.00 


199.50 


199.50 


199.50 


NCR/32 


399.50 


750.00 


399.50 


399.50 


399.50 


Subtotal 


$ 


$ 


$ 


$ $ 




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APRII 


- 1985 -BYTE 221 



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Inquiry 4 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



THE CHALLENGE 
OF OPEN 
SYSTEMS 



by Carl Hewitt 



Current logic programming methods may be insufficient 
for developing the intelligent systems of the future 



SYSTEMS OF INTERCONNECTED 
and interdependent computers are 
qualitatively different from the 
relatively isolated computers of the 
past. Such 'open systems" uncover 
important limitations in current ap- 
proaches to artificial intelligence (AI). 
They require a new approach that is 
more like organizational design and 
management than current approach- 
es. In this article we'll take a look at 
some of the implications and con- 
straints imposed by open systems. 

Open systems are always subject to 
communications and constraints from 
outside. They are characterized by the 
following properties: 

• Continuous change and evolution. Dis- 
tributed systems are always adding 
new computers, users, and software. 
As a result, systems must be able to 
change as the components and 
demands placed upon them change. 
Moreover, they must be able to evolve 
new internal components in order to 
accommodate the shifting work they 
perform. Without this capability, every 
system must reach the point where it 
can no longer expand to accommo- 



date new users and uses. 

• Arms-length relationships and decentralized 
decision making. In general, the com- 
puters, people, and agencies that 
make up open systems do not have 
direct access to one another's inter- 
nal information. Arm's-length relation- 
ships imply that the architecture must 
accommodate multiple computers at 
different physical sites that do not 
have access to the internal com- 
ponents of others. This leads to de- 
centralized decision making. 

• Perpetual inconsistency among knowledge 
bases. Because of privacy and discre- 
tionary concerns, different knowledge 
bases will contain different perspec- 
tives and conflicting beliefs. Thus, all 
the knowledge bases of a distributed 
AI system taken together will be 
perpetually inconsistent. Decentraliza- 
tion makes it impossible to update all 
knowledge bases simultaneously. This 
implies that it is not even possible to 
know what kinds of information are 
contained in all the local knowledge 
bases in the system at any one time. 
Systems must be able to operate in 
the presence of inconsistent and in- 
complete knowledge bases. 



• Need for negotiation among system com- 
ponents. In a highly distributed system, 
no system component directly con- 
trols the resources of another. The 
various components of the system 
must persuade one another to pro- 
vide capabilities. Consequently a 
distributed AI system's architecture 
must support a mechanism for 
negotiation among components. 

• Inadequacy of the closed-world assumption. 
The closed-world assumption is that 
the information about the world be- 
ing modeled is complete in the sense 
that exactly those relationships that 
hold among objects can be derived 
from the local information possessed 
by the system. Systems that depend 
on the closed-world assumption make 
use of the principle that they can find 

[continued) 

Carl Hewitt received his Ph.D. from the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971 
and since then has worked in the field of ar- 
tificial intelligence on foundational issues. His 
outside interests include hiking and skiing. 
Professor Hewitt can be reached at the MIT 
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 545 
Technology Square, Room 813, Cambridge, 
MA 02139. 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 223 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



all existing instances of a concept by 
searching their local storage At first 
glance it might seem that the closed- 
world assumption, almost universal in 
the AI literature, is smart because it 
provides a ready default answer for 
any query. Unfortunately, the default 
answers provided become less 
realistic as open systems increase in 
size and less of the information is 
available locally. 

Continuous growth and evolution, 
arm's-length relationships, incon- 
sistency among knowledge bases, de- 
centralized decision making, and the 
need for negotiation are interdepen- 
dent and necessary properties of 
open systems. 

Parallel Computation 
in Open Systems 

The theory of recursive functions (e.g., 
Hiring machines) is based on a batch- 
processing model of computation. 
Output is obt^ined from a recursive 
function when it finally halts. Open 
systems require a theory of computa- 
tion in which processing might never 
halt, may be required to provide out- 
put while still in operation, and can 
accept input from sources not antici- 
pated when the computation began. 

Asynchronous parallel computer 
systems make use of a two-input, two- 
output computing element called an 
arbiter. Arbiters are the fundamental 
hardware primitives that make parallel 
asynchronous computing different 
from sequential synchronous com- 
puting. Arbiters make decisions for 
which there is no logical justification 
(proof) because the decision cannot 
be predicted from knowledge of the 
structure of the computing system 
and its input. In a very fundamental 
sense arbiters are not equivalent to 
Tliring machines (see reference 3). 
Figure 1 shows an arbiter with inputs 
x and y and outputs x and y\ 

An arbiter decides the order in 
which it receives requests. Thus, if in- 
puts x and y are asserted at about the 
same time, the result will eventually 
be one of the possibilities shown in 
figure 2. 

The output of an arbiter is not a 







» X 1 


ARBITER 













Figure 1: An arbiter, with inputs x and 
y and outputs x and y'. 



ARBITER 



OR 





ARBITER 













Figure 2: Given that the inputs to the 
arbiter are asserted almost simultaneously, 
the resulting output will be one of the 
above two cases. 



S7 „ 




»0 






ARBITER 




.96 - 




* l 





Figure 3: \n practice, the inputs to an 
arbiter are analog signals varying between 
1 and 0. 



logical function of its input, in the 
sense that it is not a simple Boolean 
function, because the dimension of 
time enters into the semantics of ar- 
biter modules in a fundamental way. 
However, the feasible sets of outputs 
can be described in logic using the 
subsequently relation (see reference 1): 

(x=l and y=\) subsequently 
(or 
(x'=0 and y'= 1) 
(x'=l and y'=0)) 

Logic cannot be used to determine 
which particular eventuality will occur. 
Systems with arbiters are not equiva- 
lent to a nondeterministic Tliring 



machine, since an arbiter can require 
an unbounded amount of time to 
make a decision (possibly while other 
computations are taking place). If a 
nondeterministic Tliring machine is re- 
quired to make a decision, there is a 
bound on the amount of time it can 
take, and this bound is determined 
before it starts. Each individual choice 
of a nondeterministic TUring machine 
takes one step. 

In practice, the inputs to an arbiter 
are analog signals that vary con- 
tinuously between and 1. For exam- 
ple, if the actual inputs to an arbiter 
were .97 and .96, then the output 
might be as shown in figure 3. 

The arbiter has only digital outputs 
(0s or Is) even though the input is 
analog. It makes a definite digital 
choice out of the analog quantities of 
time and its two inputs. Because of 
the continuous nature of time and the 
analog nature of the input, an arbiter 
cannot be strictly modeled as a non- 
deterministic-state machine. 

In a parallel computation, arbiters 
are used repeatedly so that the 
number of possibile outcomes grows 
exponentially with time. Thus, the ac- 
tual operation of a parallel computer 
system cannot be determined logical- 
ly by the inputs to the system. The in- 
determinacy of the arbiters used in 
open computer systems results in 
their making decisions that cannot be 
proved from knowledge of structure 
of the computing system and its input. 

Decisions Justified 
by Agreements 

The electronic-banking system is a 
good example of an open system. 
You're probably familiar with it 
through the use of automated teller 
machines that enable you to withdraw 
cash thousands of miles from where 
you opened an account. Teller ma- 
chines are continually being added to 
the system. 

Decisions about which transactions 
to honor are justified on the basis of 
an agreement between the bank and 
its depositors. Often an agreement 
will provide that the bank does not 
have to honor a withdrawal if there 
are insufficient funds present in the 



224 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



account when the withdrawal is re- 
quested. The withdrawal would be 
refused even though it might be 
covered by subsequent deposits. 

The decisions of which withdrawals 
not to honor cannot be deduced from 
complete information about the struc- 
ture of the bank's computers and the 
input from the teller machines. Thus, 
the decision whether or not to honor 
a withdrawal is not subject to logical 
proof. For example suppose Account 
1 has a balance of $1000, Account 2 
has a balance of $2000, and they 
share a common reserve account with 
a credit limit of $3000. If two elec- 
tronic withdrawals of $4000 each are 
attempted at about the same time 
from both Account 1 and Account 2, 
then one of the attempts will be re- 
fused and the other one will be 
honored, though it is impossible to 
deduce which one will be honored 
and which one refused. 

The above example shows how a 
decision of an open system can be 
justified even though it does not 
follow from any proof. Instead, the 
decision is justified by an agreement 
to act in certain ways. We see a 
divergence between the theories 
used in the construction of open 
systems and their operation. Theory 
informs practice; eg., the design of 
the banking mechanism is based on 
a financial theory. However, the finan- 
cial theory does not determine the ac- 
tual operations of the bank account- 
ing system. The operation of the bank 
accounts is determined by the order 
in which asynchronous events occur 
inside the system. Each performance 
of a complicated open system is 
unique. 

This illustrates the divergence be- 
tween classic recursive-function 
theory and theories needed to model 
open systems. (For a further discus- 
sion of the mathematical semantics 
needed to model the behavior of 
open systems, see references I and 
3.) 

Exploration vs. Search 

Searching in problem spaces is the 
traditional AI framework. Problem 
spaces and problems have been de- 



fined as follows (see reference 16): 

Problem Space: A problem space 
consists of a set of symbolic struc- 
tures (the states of the space) and a 
set of operators over the space. Each 
operator takes a state as input and 
produces a state as output, although 
there may be other inputs and out- 
puts as well. The operators may be 
partial, i.e., not defined for all states. 
Sequences of operators define paths 
that thread their way through se- 
quences of states. 

Problem: A problem in a problem 
space consists of a set of initial 

states, a set of goal states, and a set 
of path constraints. The problem is to 
find a path through the space that 
starts at any initial state, passes only 
along paths that satisfy the path 
constraints, and ends at any goal 
state. 



A good example of a problem 
space is that of the game of chess: 

1. initial state: chess pieces in starting 
position 

2. Operations: legal moves 

3. Goal states: checkmate stalemate, 
etc. 

I claim that searching through prob- 
lem-solving spaces provides a narrow 
foundation for the analysis and syn- 
thesis of intelligent systems. The 
perspective must be broadened to in- 
clude exploration that goes beyond 
search. An excellent perspective on 
some of the differences between 
search and exploration is provided by 
the means used to explore and de- 
velop the North American continent. 

1. Initial state: There was no well- 
defined initial global state of the 

[continued) 



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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 225 



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226 BYTE * APRIL 1985 



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Inquiry 321 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



North American continent in the mid- 
dle 1600s. Leif Ericson and Chris- 
topher Columbus had led some early 
probes, but the information was 
fragmentary, dispersed, and self- 
contradictory. 

2. Operations: The set of operations 
used to explore the continent was not 
defined in advance. Instead, it was im- 
provised dynamically and interactive- 
ly in the course of initial probes. Fur- 
thermore the explorers operated in 
parallel so that there is no path of 
states of the continent that adequate- 
ly explains how it was explored. That 
is, the continent was not explored by 
finding a single path through a space 
of states. Exploration of the North 
American continent can be better 
modeled as a partial order of causal- 
ly linked historical events than as a 
problem space. 

3. Goal states: There was no set of im- 
mutable global goal states for the 
continent that the explorers set out 
to achieve. Rather, the explorers' goals 
evolved with the exploration methods 
as the exploration proceeded. 

Searching problem spaces is limited 
mainly in its applicability to artificial 
domains like chess and mathematical 
theorem proving. It is not very adapt- 
able to the hurly-burly of solving 
problems involving interaction with 
the physical world. Problem spaces 
do not provide sufficient flexibility to 
represent the problem-solving pro- 
cesses of communities because of the 
attempt to represent the problem 
solving of individual actors as a single 
global state. This limitation of prob- 
lem spaces is closely related to the in- 
adequacies of the Hiring machine as 
a model of asynchronous distributed 
systems. Problem solving in open sys- 
tems is more analogous to the ex- 
ploration of North America than the 
playing of games like chess. 

Planner 

Planner was one of the first AI pro- 
gramming languages to support goal- 
oriented problem solving without an 
externally specified problem space. It 
was based on the following principles 
(see reference 6): 



• Accessibility: Planner aims for a max- 
imum of flexibility so that whatever 
knowledge is available can be incor- 
porated into the problem-solving pro- 
cess even if it is fragmentary and 
heuristic. 

• Pattern-directed invocation: Procedures 
in Planner can be invoked by patterns 
of what they are supposed to accom- 
plish. Suppose that we have a 
stopped sink. One way we could try 
to solve the problem would be to 
know the name of a plumber whom 
we could call. An alternative that is 
more analogous to pattern-directed 
invocation is to advertise the fact that 
we have a stopped sink and the quali- 
fications needed to fix it. In Planner 
this is accomplished by making the 
advertisement (i.e., the pattern that 
represents what is desired) into a 
goal. 

• Procedural interpretation of logical state- 
ments: One basic idea behind Planner 



is to exploit the duality that we find 
between certain imperative and 
declarative sentences. Consider the 
statement (implies A B). The state- 
ment is a perfectly good declarative. 
In addition, it can also have certain 
imperative uses for Planner. It can say 
that we might set up a procedure that 
will note whether A is ever asserted 
and if so to consider the wisdom of 
asserting B in turn. Furthermore Plan- 
ner permits us to set up a procedure 
that will watch to see if it is ever our 
goal to try to deduce B and if so 
whether A should be made a subgoal. 
Exactly the same observation can be 
made about the contrapositive of the 
statement (implies A B). Statements 
with universal quantifiers, conjunc- 
tions, disjunctions, etc., can also have 
both declarative and imperative uses. 
Planner theorems are used as im- 
peratives when executed and as 

{continued) 





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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 227 



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228 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 201 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



declaratives when used as data. 

Planner represented an advance 
over the "uniform proof procedures" 
of resolution theorem-proving sys- 
tems then current. The design for 
Planner was implemented by Suss- 
man, Winograd, and Charniak (see 
references 5, 23). Winograd used it to 
implement his interactive natural- 
language program, SHRDLU, for a 
world with simulated toy blocks (see 
reference 27). 

In order to understand how pro- 
cedural interpretation works, consider 
this logical statement: 

(For All x ((man x) implies (mortal x))) 

The implication has two parts: the 
antecedent (man x) and the conse- 
quent (mortal x). It says: For every x, 
if x is a man, then x is mortal. Logical 
rules of inference permit certain 
deductions from the above statement. 
For instance, that Socrates is mortal 
can be derived from the premise that 
Socrates is a man as follows: 

(Man Socrates) 



(Mortal Socrates) 

I proposed that logical implications 
like "all men are mortal" could be in- 
terpreted as procedures in a program- 
ming language. One interpretation, the 
belief-invoked interpretation (called the 
"antecedent interpretation" in Planner), 
provides that when the belief that x 
is a man is held, then the belief that 
x is mortal can be logically derived. 
We can express this as follows: 

(when (belief (man %)) do 
(believe (mortal x))) 

Another interpretation, the goal- 
invoked interpretation (called the "con- 
sequent interpretation" in Planner), 
provides that from the goal that x is 
mortal, the subgoal that x is a man 
can be logically derived: 

(when (goal (mortal x)) do 
(show (man x))) 

The ideas in Planner have been 
generalized and perfected in subse- 
quent artificial-intelligence program- 
ming languages. However, by them- 



selves they do not address the needs 
of open systems. 

Logic Programming 

Logic programming has been pro- 
posed by some as the programming 
paradigm for the future (see reference 
12). Let's focus on limitations that are 
inherent in the enterprise of attempt- 
ing to use logic as a programming lan- 
guage for dealing reliably with em- 
pirical knowledge and interacting with 
the physical world. The remarks in this 
section continue a debate that begins 
with the genesis of AI. 1 recommend 
that interested readers consult the ap- 
pendix to Marvin Minsky's frames 
paper (see reference 1 5) and the sub- 
sequent analysis of David Israel (see 
reference 8). 

Logic programming must be based 
on logic. But what is logic? First-order 
logic, with its well-defined semantics 
and syntax, is the basis claimed by 



most of those who call themselves 
logic programmers. In part, the con- 
fidence of logic programmers is 
based on the fact that first-order logic 
augmented with set theory has 
proved to be a good foundation for 
mathematical semantics. 

Omega-order logic is an extension 
to first-order logic that allows quan- 
tification over predicates and func- 
tions. It has advantages over first- 
order logic in that it includes the full 
lambda calculus as a sublanguage 
and has arbitrary powers of abstrac- 
tion. When certain technical problems 
having to do with Russell's Paradox 
have been dealt with, omega-order 
logic may be the preferred logical lan- 
guage (see reference 19). Therefore, 
we should consider it to be in the 
mainstream of logic programming. 
Experts have argued that the merits 
of other logics can be found in first- 

{continued) 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 229 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



order logic (see references 14 and 26), 
so the analysis in this article is con- 
fined to first-order logic without loss 
of generality. 

The Inconsistency Problem 

I make the following claim, which I call 
the Conjecture of Inconsistency: The 
axiomatizations of the human knowl- 
edge of all physical systems are 
uniformly inconsistent in practice. 

I've used the term conjecture because 
the above claim is in principle impos- 
sible to prove rigorously, easy to 
disprove by counterexample, and has 
a preponderance of evidence in its 
favor. The reasons for the inconsisten- 
cy have to do with the dispersed asyn- 
chronous nature of human knowl- 
edge, including the following factors: 

• Environmental context: The physical sys- 
tem being axiomatized is related to 
various other physical systems. For ex- 



ample, a diseased kidney is often 
related to a diseased heart. Knowl- 
edge of the kidney cannot be sepa- 
rated from knowledge of the heart. 

• Spatiotemporal context: A physical sys- 
tem is situated in space and time. 
Knowledge of the physical system 
comprises knowledge of its history 
and mode of production. 

• Terminological context: The predicates 
used in the axiomatization of the 
properties of a physical object are 
always somewhat problematic in prac- 
tice. For example, specifying in prac- 
tice what it means for a physical table 
to be flat raised many problematic 
issues. 

• Evidential context: It is impossible to 
separate what we know about a 
physical object from how we came to 
know it. Axiomatization of the 
methods by which the axiomatized 
knowledge came to be known further 
enlarges the axiomatization. 



The DEC System-20 is a good case 
in point. In the first place observe that 
the DEC System-20 is an extremely 
simple system in comparison with, 
say, the human kidney. Furthermore, 
the DEC System-20 is an artificial 
human construct that was designed to 
be consistent with some simple re- 
quirements. Nevertheless, despite the 
best efforts of software engineers, the 
formal description (axiomatization of 
documentation and code) of the DEC 
System-20 remains inconsistent. 
There are inconsistencies in the docu- 
mentation as well as inconsistencies 
between the documentation and the 
code. Although inconsistencies are 
continually being removed from the 
system, the experience is that more 
inconsistencies are always found 
immediately. 

Suppose that we were given un- 
limited funding to undertake the job 

{continued) 



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Inquiry 143 for Dealers. 
Inquiry 144 for End Users. 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



of making the description of the DEC 
System-20 consistent. We would have 
to control the process by which the 
system grows and evolves. In par- 
ticular, we would have to handle all 
changes to the documentation and 
code in face of the following external 
requirements: 

• Bugs in both the code and docu- 
mentation must be fixed 

• New functions must be incor- 
porated to meet the customers' 
changing needs 

• The system must accept changing 
interfaces to other systems such as 
peripherals and networks 

There is no way to prove that the 
process by which the DEC System-20 
evolves will result in new releases with 
consistent formal descriptions. An ax- 
iomatization of the code and docu- 
mentation of even a system as simple 



as the DEC System-20 is, in practice 
inconsistent despite enormous efforts 
made to achieve consistency 

A second claim I make is that the 
axiomatizations of the human knowl- 
edge about any physical systems will 
forever be inconsistent. 1 call it the 
Conjecture of Perpetual Inconsisten- 
cy: Removing some inconsistencies 
from an axiomatization of the human 
knowledge about a physical system 
leaves an axiomatization which is 
nevertheless inconsistent. 

Message -Passing Semantics 

Consideration of the previous claim 
suggests that we need to examine 
how logic treats inconsistency. Incon- 
sistencies have some important im- 
plications of the utility of logic pro- 
gramming as a foundation for intelli- 
gent systems. The logical view of in- 
consistent theories is clear: They are 
meaningless because they corre- 



spond to no possible world. The 
logical account of meaning is too 
stringent for nontrivial empirical 
systems because inconsistent beliefs 
and descriptions are not meaningless. 
Inconsistency is inherent in the enter- 
prise of expressing the human knowl- 
edge of physical systems. A theory of 
meaning that maintains that inconsis- 
tent descriptions are meaningless is 
not directly applicable to problems of 
empirical knowledge 

In model theory, the meaning of a 
sentence is determined by the models 
that make it true (see reference 24). 
For example the conjunction of two 
sentences is true exactly when both 
of its conjuncts are true TYuth- 
theoretic semantics assumes that it is 
possible to give an account of truth 
in itself, free of interactional issues, 
and that the theory of meaning can 
be based on such a theory of truth. 

{continued) 



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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 233 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



Message-passing semantics takes a 
different perspective on the meaning 
of a sentence: It takes the meaning of 
a message to be the effect it has on 
the subsequent behavior of the sys- 
tem. In other words, the meaning of 
a message is determined by how it af- 
fects the recipients. Each partial 
meaning of a message is constructed 



by a recipient in terms of how it is pro- 
cessed (see reference 12). At a deep 
level understanding always involves 
categorization, which is a function of 
interactional (rather than inherent) 
properties using the perspective of in- 
dividual viewpoints (see reference 13). 
Meaning is thus fundamentally inter- 
actional. The meaning of a message 



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is open-ended and unfolds indefinite- 
ly far into the future as other reci- 
pients process the message. Accord- 
ing to message-passing semantics, 
meaning is communication-based, not 
logic-based. 

Need for Due-Process 
Reasoning 

In the presence of conflicting informa- 
tion and contradictory beliefs, logical 
proof is inadequate as a reasoning 
mechanism. Instead we need due- 
process reasoning that investigates dif- 
ferent sides of beliefs, goals, and 
hypotheses that arise. 

Consider the following hypothesis 
to illustrate due-process reasoning: 
"Nixon was guilty of destruction of 
evidence in the Watergate case by 
erasing a portion of a tape recording." 
One possible approach in logic pro- 
gramming is to gather evidence in 
favor of the hypothesis and attempt 
to fashion the evidence into a logic 
proof (perhaps augmented with "cer- 
tainty factors" or "default assump- 
tions"). The other approach is to use 
"negation as failure" to conclude that 
the hypothesis is false because it can- 
not be proved from the available 
knowledge. Both of the approaches 
are inadequate in this case. No mat- 
ter how much evidence is produced 
and analyzed, logical proof (either for 
or against Nixon's guilt) is unbalanced 
because it presents only one side of 
the case in the form of a proof. Using 
"negation as failure" to draw conclu- 
sions from the inability to construct 
such a proof is equally limited. A 
balanced approach requires debate 
between differing positions and 
weighing presented evidence. 
Debates are not structured in the 
same way as logical proofs. 

Due-process reasoning is the pro- 
cess of collecting and analyzing the 
evidence and arguments presented 
by all interested parties. Advocates col- 
lect evidence and organize arguments 
in favor of the hypothesis. In parallel, 
skeptics collect evidence and organize 
arguments against the hypothesis. 
Then a debate is conducted on 
grounds for deciding the case in 
terms of motive and ability. The ques- 



234 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 1 6 



OPEN SYSTEMS 



tion of motive is whether Nixon 
thought that he would benefit by eras- 
ing the tape. The question of ability 
is whether he could have erased the 
tape Both advocates and skeptics 
recursively make use of due-process 
reasoning while investigating, organiz- 
ing, and presenting their cases. The 
advocates and skeptics operate inter- 
dependent^ in collecting evidence 
(through discovery processes and 
disclosure requirements) as well as in- 
teracting by debating each others' 
cases in a decision-making process 
that is fundamentally different from 
logical proof. 

Prolog 

Advocates of logic programming ini- 
tially developed a programming lan- 
guage called Prolog that was based 
on the goal-invoked procedural inter- 
pretation of implication discussed 
earlier in the section on Planner (see 
reference 11). The example discussed 
earlier to the effect that "In order to 
show that x is mortal, establish a 
subgoal to show that x is a man" is 
written in Prolog as: 

mortal (x) :- man (x) 

The original Prolog was a much 
simpler language than Planner, which 
was a considerable advantage in 
terms of pedagogy and ease of imple- 
mentation. But now Prolog, like the 
Planner-like languages before it, has 
fissioned into incompatible dialects 
based on the procedural interpreta- 
tion of logic, pattern-directed invoca- 
tion, message-passing theory, and de- 
scription systems (see references 4, 9, 
and 12). 

In addition to the general limitations 
of logic programming discussed 
earlier, Prolog has some idiosyncratic 
weaknesses all its own. The closed- 
world assumption is the hypothesis 
that the locally available knowledge 
is complete; i.e., if a proposition does 
not follow from the local knowledge 
base, then it is assumed to be false 
(see reference 18). Planner could 
make use of the closed-world assump- 
tion using its ability to conditionalize 
a plan (theorem) on the exhaustive 

{continued) 



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OPEN SYSTEMS 



failure to establish a goal. In fact, 
Winograd made strong use of the 
capability in SHRDLU. Influenced by 
Planner, Prolog went much further 
and adopted a very strong form of the 
closed-world assumption as a basic 
postulate of the programming lan- 
guage in incorporating negation as 
failure. (Relational database systems 
make use of a similar strong hypothe- 
sis: If an entry is not found in a rela- 
tional table then the relationship is 
false.) The strong use of the closed- 
world assumption in Prolog is incom- 
patible with the need in open systems 
to allow for the open-ended in- 
cremental introduction of new beliefs 
and objects. 

Information-Processing 
Principles for the Future 

The term reflection has been much 
discussed in the current AI literature 
(see references 2, 4, 7, 22, and 26). 
It is universally conjectured that 
reflective problem capabilities will be 
important to improving machine 
problem-solving capabilities. How- 
ever, a danger is developing that the 
important problems will be neglected 
unless reflective problem solving is 
taken to encompass the following 
minimum capabilities: 

• History of its own behavior. What did 
you do then? 

• Representation of its own information- 
processing procedures: How do you make 
decisions? 

• Knowledge of the relationship between its 
previous behavior and current procedures: 
What would you do differently and 
why? 

• Representation of its procedures for inter- 
acting with the external world: How do you 
control things? 

The current state of the art in imple- 
menting reflective systems is extreme- 
ly primitive. Many of the issues and 
questions itemized above have not 
yet been properly addressed. 

Besides reflective problem solving, 
other principles should be adopted in 
constructing reliable systems that 
meet the needs of open systems. 

[continued) 



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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 237 



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OPEN SYSTEMS 



• Serendipity: It is not critical whether 
the system learns of a result before 
it can be used in a problem-solving 
task or after work has commenced on 
the task. 

• Pluralism: There is no central arbiter 
of truth in the system. 

• Accessibility: All knowledge of the sys- 
tem (including its own procedures) 
should be able to be applied to any 
problem. 

• Parallelism: The system should be 
able to mobilize its full resources in 
parallel instantiations for different 
aspects of large-scale problems. 

• Due-process reasoning: The system col- 
lects and debates alternatives to 
decide among beliefs and goals. 

• Reflection in practice: Knowledge (in- 
cluding self-knowledge) should inform 
practice, and practice should modify 
hypotheses, beliefs, and goals. 

• Reasonableness: The system should 
perform efficiently in the face of con- 
flicting information and inconsistent 
beliefs. 

Conclusions 

In practice, the human knowledge of 
a physical system cannot be con- 
sistently axiomatized. Every physical 
system is open in the sense that it is 
embedded in a larger physical en- 
vironment with which it interacts asyn- 
chronously In general, open systems 
are not totally in control of their fate. 
In contrast, closed systems (like Peano 
arithmetic and point-set topology) are 
exactly characterized by rules and 
laws. 

Proponents of logic programming 
have maintained that it is a suitable 
basis for all programming and is the 
programming paradigm for the future. 
Logic programming has some funda- 
mental limitations that preclude its 
becoming a satisfactory programming 
methodology. It is inadequate for the 
needs of open systems because it is 
based on logical operations instead 
of communication primitives and 
logical reasoning instead of due- 
process reasoning. Decisions in open 
systems are justified by agreements to 
act in certain ways. Justification by 
agreement stands in contrast to justi- 

{continued) 
<* — Inquiry 342 



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OPEN SYSTEMS 



fication by logical proof; interaction 
with the physical world involves deal- 
ing with conflicting and contradictory 
information in a way that does not fall 
within the scope of decision making 
by logical proof. Prolog also suffers 
from the limitation of "negation as 
failure," restricting it to a closed-world 
assumption that is incompatible with 
the nature of open systems. 

We need foundations for intelligent 
systems based on principles of com- 
mutativity pluralism, accessibility 
reflection in practice, and due-process 
reasoning. Logical reasoning is a 
useful module in the repertoire of an 
intelligent system, but it is not the 
whole show. ■ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Many of the ideas in this paper have been 
developed jointly with the members of the 
MIT Message Passing Semantics Group 
and the TVement Research Institute. I 
would especially like to express my ap- 
preciation to Gul Agha, Gerald Barber, 
Peter de Jong, Elihu M. Gerson, and Susan 
Leigh Star for their aid and the founda- 
tional work on which this paper builds. 
Jonathan Amsterdam, Mike Brady Mike 
Brooks, Toni Cohen, Peter de long. John 
Kam, Henry Lieberman, John Maliery 
Fanya Montalvo, Karen Prendergast 
Claudia Smith, and John Teeter provided 
valuable comments and criticisms that 
helped greatly to improve on earlier drafts. 
Over many years I have benefited from ex- 
tensive interactions with Richard 
Weyhrauch, who has a profound under- 
standing of the issues discussed here. 

The content of this paper comes from 
talks I have given at Stanford University 
in June 1983, at panels for IFIP-83 in Paris, 
at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab- 
oratory in November 1983, at BBN, at MIT 
Sloan School, and at the AAAS in New 
York during June 1984. Comments, 
criticisms, and arguments developed in 
these seminars have been invaluable in 
developing this paper. I would like to ex- 
press special appreciation to Bob Moore 
Nils Nilsson, Steve Hardy Richard 
Waldinger, and others for valuable feed- 
back during and after the Stanford 
seminar; Bob Kowalski and Doug Ross at 
the IFIP-83 panel; Jan Komorowski at the 
MIT seminar; David Israel at the BBN 
seminar; Tom Malone and Gerald Barber 
at the Sloan School seminar; as well as 
Victor Lesser, Jerry Hobbs, and Lucy 

{continued] 



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Suchman at the AAAS session. Allen 
Newell took the time to give me an over- 
view of some of the aspects of his recent 
work on foundations in July 1984. 

This paper describes research done at 
the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. 
Major support for the research reported 
in this paper was provided by the System 
Development Foundation and Wang 
Laboratories. Major support for other 
related work at the Artificial Intelligence 
Laboratory is provided, in part, by the Ad- 
vanced Research Projects Agency of the 
Department of Defense under Office of 
Naval Research contract N0014- 
80-C-0505. I would like to thank Charles 
Smith and Patrick H. Winston for their sup- 
port and encouragement. 

REFERENCES 

1. Agha, Gul. "Semantic Considerations in 
the Actor Paradigm of Concurrent Com- 
putation." Proceedings of the NSF/SERC 
Seminar on Concurrency. New York: Springer- 
Verlag, 1984. 

2. Batali, J. "Computational Introspection." 
AI Memo 701. Cambridge. MA: MIT Ar- 
tificial Intelligence Laboratory. February 
1983. 

3. dinger, W D. "Foundations of Actor 
Semantics." AI-TR-633. Cambridge, MA: 
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, May 
1981. 

4. Doyle, J. "A Model for Deliberation, Ac- 
tion, and Introspection." AI-TR-581. Cam- 
bridge, MA: MIT Artificial Intelligence 
Laboratory. 1980. 

5. Hewitt, C. "PLANNER: A Language for 
Proving Theorems in Robots." Proceedings 
of IJCAI-69. Washington, DC: IJCAI. May 
1969. 

6. Hewitt, C. "Description and Theoretical 
Analysis (Using Schemata) of PLANNER: 
A Language for Proving Theorems and 
Manipulating Models in a Robot." 
AI-TR-258. Cambridge, MA: MIT Artificial 
Intelligence Laboratory, April 1972. 

7. Hewitt C, and P. de Jong. "Analyzing 
the Roles of Descriptions and Actions in 
Open Systems." Proceedings of the National 
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAA1, 
August 1983. 

8. Israel, D. A Short Companion to the 
Naive Physics Manifesto" In Formal Theories 
of the Common Sense World, I. Hobbs, ed. 
Abelex. 1984. 

9. Kahn, K. "How to Implement Prolog on 
a LISP Machine" In Implementations of Pro- 
log, Campbell, J. A., ed. New York: John 
Wiley & Sons, 1984, pages 117-134. 

10. Kornfeld, W. A., and C Hewitt. "The 
Scientific Community Metaphor." IEEE 
Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. 



SMC-11, 1. January 1981. 

11. Kowalski, R. A. "Predicate Logic as Pro- 
gramming Language." Proceedings of 1 T1P-74 . 
IFIP, 1974. 

12. Kowalski. R. A. In The SIGART Special 
Issue on Knowledge Representation, R. Brachman 
and B. Smith, eds. SIGART, 1978. 

13. Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson. Metaphors 
We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press. 1980. 

14. McCarthy, J. "First Order Theories of 
Individual Concepts and Propositions." 
Stanford. CA: Stanford University Press, 
July 1977. 

1 5. Minsky, M. "A Framework for Repre- 
senting Knowledge." In The Psychology of 
Computer Vision, Winston, P., ed. New York: 
McGraw-Hill, 197 5. 

16. Newell, Allen. "Reasoning, Problem 
Solving, and Decision Processes: The 
Problem Space as a Fundamental 
Category." Technical Report CMU-CS-79-I33. 
CMU, June 1979. 

17. Reddy, M. "The Conduit Metaphor." In 
Metaphor and Thought, Ortony, A., ed. Cam- 
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. 

18. Reiter, R. "On Closed World Data 
Bases." logic and Data Bases. New York: 
Plenum Publishing Corp.. 1981. 

19. Rudin. L. "Lambda-Logic." Technical 
Report 4521. Pasadena, CA: California In- 
stitute of Technology, May 1981. 

20. Selfridge, O. "Pandemonium: A 
Paradigm for Learning." Technical Report 
JA-1140. Cambridge: MIT. 1958. 

21. Shapiro, E. "A Subset of Concurrent 
Prolog and Its Interpreter." Technical Report 
TRO03. 1COT, January 1983. 

22. Smith, B. "Reflection and Semantics in 
a Procedural Language." LCS-TR-272. 
Cambridge, MA: MIT Laboratory for 
Computer Science, 1982. 

23. Sussman, G. J., T. Winograd, and E. 
Charniak. "MICROPLANNER Reference 
Manual." A! Memo 203. Cambridge, MA: 
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 
1970. 

24. Tarski, A. "The Semantic Conception 
of Truth." Philosophy and Phenomenological 
Research 4 (1944). pages 341-375. 

2 5. van Emden, M., and R. Kowalski. "The 
Semantics of Predicate Logic as a Pro- 
gramming Language." J ACM 23, No 4 
(1976), pages 733-742. 

26. Weyhrauch. R. "Prolegomena to a 
Theory of Mechanized Formal Reasoning." 
Artificial Intelligence 13, 1, 2 (April 1980), 
pages 133-172. 

27. Winograd, T "Procedures as a Repre- 
sentation for Data in a Computer Program 
for Understanding Natural Language." 
Cambridge, MA: MIT Project MAC, MAC 
TR 83, 1971. 



242 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



VISION 



by Dana H. Ballard and Christopher M. Brown 



Biology challenges technology 



VISION AND MOTOR CONTROL are 
such common capabilities in the 
animal kingdom that we do not usual- 
ly associate them with intelligence. Yet 
vision has always been a paradigm 
problem for artificial intelligence (AI), 
since it is mysteriously difficult. Tech- 
nology has mounted many responses 
to the biological challenge of reliable, 
versatile, real-time vision systems, but 
so far the resulting industrial systems 
only work in specialized settings (or 
domains). These systems are routinely 
used to inspect integrated circuits and 
manipulate parts but cannot be used 
outside of these limited contexts. For 
example, the systems' image input is 
binary (black and white), not the full 
gray-scale range provided by an input 
device such as a TV camera. Attain- 
ing such an image calls for carefully 
engineered lighting and imaging con- 
ditions. Also, to attain the necessary 
speed, the systems have simple algo- 
rithms that will not tolerate events 
such as parts obscuring one another 
or lying propped up at odd angles. A 
seemingly simple but elusive in- 
dustrial vision task, beyond the capa- 
bility of all current systems, is the "bin- 
picking" problem, one regularly sur- 
mounted by humans; It involves sim- 



ply grasping and removing parts 
jumbled together in a bin, not laid out 
flat on a special surface. 

Thus, fast, reliable computer vision 
is so hard that we can presently 
achieve it only in highly constrained 
and simplified domains. This makes 
the fast and reliable vision performed 
by biological systems all the more 
marvelous and mysterious. Somehow, 
humans perform recognition, descrip- 
tion, manipulation, and locomotion in 
a highly complex world of moving 
solid objects, both rigid and nonrigid, 
with complex (textured, transparent, 
glossy, etc.) surfaces and highly 
variable illumination conditions. 

General-purpose vision systems, 
which can build descriptions of their 
environment in general situations, re- 
main a research goal. Today, a consen- 
sus is emerging that such systems will 
be designed around two central ideas, 
originating in biology and redis- 
covered by researchers in technology. 
The embodiment of these ideas in vi- 
sion systems is a topic of much cur- 
rent concern and an area of rapidly 
expanding technological achievement 
and biological insight. 

The first idea is that vision systems 
use a hierarchy of representations 



that develops visual information in 

many intermediate stages to span the 
gap from input signal to cognitive 
symbols. Computer-vision researchers 
found the hierarchy to be a solution 
to several technical problems of com- 
puting and storage efficiency. Current- 
ly, researchers in the neurosciences 
are studying the extent of such a func- 
tional and physiological hierarchy in 
biological systems, and many signs 
point to biological versions of the 
computer-vision hierarchy. 

The second idea is parallel com- 
putation. Researchers have known for 
a long time that nervous systems com- 
pute in parallel, and they have made 
many attempts to model such com- 
putations. Recent work has provided 
new tools in these areas (see the ar- 
ticles in this issue "Learning in Parallel 
Networks" by Geoffrey E. H in ton on 
page 265 and "Connections" by 
Jerome A. Feldman on page 277) and 
powerful parallel computing engines 
are now realizable. In the remainder 

[continued) 
Dana H. Ballard is an associate professor and 
Christopher M. Brown is the chairman of the 
Department of Computer Science. University 
of Rochester (Ray P. Hylan Building, 
Rochester, NY 14627). 



«« — Inquiry 363 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 245 



VISION 



of this article, we will explore the two 
themes of representational hierarchy 
and parallelism in computational and 
biological vision. 

History and Background 

The digital analysis of visual input has 
been a research issue since the late 
1950s when computers became large 



enough to accommodate such data. 
After about a quarter of a century of 
development, computer vision is a 
large subfield of AI. Like robotic con- 
trol and computer-speech analysis, 
computer vision often uses "real" 
data—that is, the raw output of 
sensors— as its input. However, com- 
puter vision also uses more symbolic 



c 



OBJECT. SCENE, EVENT RECOGNITION 



) 



SCENE DATA STRUCTURES 

FACES. EDGES. VERTICES 

OBJECT BOUNDARIES 

VOLUMES 

SPATIAL RELATIONS 



THREE-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS 
SEGMENTATION 
INTERPOLATION 
BOUNDARY AND OBJECT DETECTION 



DATA STRUCTURES 
REGIONS 
LINES 
SPATIAL RELATIONS 



PHYSICAL PROPERTY IMAGES 

SURFACE ORIENTATION 

MOTION 

STEREO FUSION 

REFLECTANCE 

DEPTH 



TWO-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS 
FEATURE -FINDING 
SIMPLE GROUPING 
IMAGE SEGMENTATION 



( IN 



TRINSIC IMAGE CALCULATION 



) 



IMAGE(S) 

COLOR OR GRAYSCALE INFORMATION. 
POSSIBLY TIME -VARYING 



SCALING AND CORRECTION 

IMAGE PREPROCESSING 
NOISE REMOVAL 
CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT 
GAMMA CORRECTION 



SENSING 

TV INPUT 

DIGITIZATION 
REMOTE SENSING 



Figure 1: The processes (ellipses) and data representations (rectangles) of a general 
computer-vision system. Processing can proceed from input data to symbolic description 
(a normal data-driven scheme] or in the reverse direction [where expectations guide 
processing). Control is most often thought to flow in both directions. Each stage of 
processing includes assumptions about how the image information is related to the 
phenomena of interest in the world. In natural systems these assumptions may be 
innate or learned. 



246 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



or processed data. Thus, one vision 
program can have, for example, an ar- 
ray of gray-level intensities from a 
television image as input, while an- 
other program may take a symbolic 
description of a line drawing as input. 

The goals of computer vision are also 
diverse but may be characterized as 
seeking answers to "what," "where," 
and "why" questions. "What" ques- 
tions concern the identification of ob- 
jects in a scene; "where" questions in- 
volve the perception of the environ- 
ment in time and space; and "why" 
questions address causal relation- 
ships between objects. 

Thae computer vision, with the goal 
of understanding images of complex 
three-dimensional scenes, was first at- 
tempted in the early 1960s by Larry 
Roberts at MIT (see reference 1). His 
goal was to "understand" a scene 
made up of polyhedral blocks, in the 
sense of being able to produce a line 
drawing of the scene from any view- 
point. Roberts's system pioneered 
many fundamental techniques still in 
use today, not just in computer vision, 
but also in computer graphics. In par- 
ticular, the system analyzed digitized 
input images by identifying "edge 
elements" that might line up along the 
polyhedral edges (see figure 3 b for an 
illustration of this technique in 
another application). The system then 
fused these edge elements to pro- 
duce longer lines that corresponded 
to the polyhedral edges (figure 3 c 
again is similar) and matched the 
resulting line and polygon data struc- 
tures against three-dimensional 
models of primitive blocks. This pro- 
cess derived the scaling, rotation, and 
translation of the models needed to 
explain the image data, and this infor- 
mation allowed the system to produce 
the final line drawings, using basic 
computer-graphics techniques— also 
first attempted by Roberts— such as 
hidden-line removal. 

Roberts's goal was ambitious even 
by today's standards: No computer vi- 
sion system will perform the task of 
reliably identifying blocks on a table 
in the presence of occlusion and 
noise. However, such early work 

{continued) 

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VISION 



revealed the immense computational 
complexity of vision and the unreli- 
ability and inadequacy of sequential 
control structures to allocate process- 
ing power. 
Such a task requires an extraordi- 



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includes extracting physical informa- 
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Figure 2a: Optic flow images (retinal pattern velocities caused by scene motion) from 
a rotating sphere and cylinder. 



Thus the field of computer vision is 
quite large. It includes the afore- 
mentioned industrial inspection sys- 
tems, as well as academic research ef- 
forts whose competence (what we 
must know to solve a problem) is 
often of more interest than their per- 
formance (how we actually solve the 
problem in real time). See the biblio- 
graphy at the end of this article for 
more material on the field of com- 
puter vision. 

in the 1970s a cognitive approach 
to computer vision arose, which con- 
veniently minimized image-level com- 
putation and emphasized the sym- 
bolic manipulations to which com- 
puters are well adapted. In such 
"knowledge-directed" vision, process- 
ing uses facts about such phenomena 
as gravity, support, occlusion, or the 
likely spatial relations between ob- 
jects in the scene. Research turned 
toward representing and manipulating 
facts about a particular setting (or do- 
main, such as a grouping of polyhedral 
blocks or an office scene) and exploit- 
ing the domain-specific knowledge in 
vision. 

However, the representation and 
application of knowledge is a very dif- 
ficult branch of AI, and the available 
techniques proved inadequate to 
bridge the gap between the input 
image and the desired symbolic de- 
scriptions of it. Thus in 1974, starting 
with Marr at MIT and Barrow and 
Tenenbaum at Stanford Research In- 
stitute, attention was directed toward 
a collection of intermediate represen- 
tations, termed intrinsic images, that 
would span the representation gap. 

Today, the consensus of the com- 
puter-vision community is that this 
gap is bridged by a set of visual data 
representations that are arranged in 
a hierarchy of increasing abstraction. 

Vision and 

the Abstraction Hierarchy 

Our vision is quite reliable— that is, 
there is a good correlation between 
our perceptions and things in the 
world. Otherwise, we would not have 
survived as a species. How do we ig- 
nore irrelevant variations and concen- 
trate on those that mean something? 



248 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



VISION 



How do we achieve the constancies 
whereby we recognize objects under 
varying illumination, or faces at dif- 
ferent ages? How do we perform so 
fast and reliably? A partial answer to 
these questions is that of abstraction 
hierarchies. 

Modern computer vision spans the 
gap between input image and object 
perception with a hierarchy of repre- 
sentations (the aforementioned intrin- 
sic images) operated on by powerful 
computational processes (as shown in 
figure 1). These processes create 
representations that pass from image- 
like representations of physical 
parameters to symbolic descriptions. 
Constructing these intermediate 
descriptions is feasible and probably 
necessary, but it involves complex 
computations for a general vision sys- 
tem (as opposed to a highly spe- 
cialized system, such as an industrial 
system). 

At the earliest level (the input level), 
a general vision system derives a rep- 
resentation of image brightness 
changes that it uses for stereo dispari- 
ty calculations (the difference be- 
tween two views of the same setting), 
detecting changes in surface composi- 
tion, orientation, distance, reflectance 
and so forth. Perceptual phenomena 
(e.g., subjective contours, the ability 
to discern colinearity of dissimilar 
shapes) suggest components for the 
earliest image representations (e.g., 
locations, orientations, and endpoints 
of features). Feature detectors that 
derive these components may then 
be designed by humans. 

Much current research is centered 
around the production of physical 
property images, which are inter- 
mediate representations that the sys- 
tem forms before attempting object 
recognition. These image-like repre- 
sentations are registered with the in- 
put image and contain values of 
physical parameters of scene points 
such as the distance from a sensor to 
the point, the albedo (reflective 
power) of surfaces, the objects' direc- 
tion of motion, the location of 
shadows and light sources, and so 
forth. Researchers generally assume 
that the processes producing physical 



property images are part of 'early vi- 
sion." That is, they are not dependent 
on the context of the scene being 
viewed, much less on conscious rea- 
soning, but are robust general pro- 
cesses that produce reliable output in 



a broad range of natural circum- 
stances. However, these processes 
cannot be completely general and 
reliable, since the two-dimensional in- 
put image does not capture three- 

[continued) 




Figure 2b; Shapes causing the images as derived by a computational vision process. 
Such processes use mathematical models of physical laws and assumptions about nature 
to recover physical information about scenes from input images. \Courtesy of John 
Aloimonis, University of Rochester.] 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 249 



VISION 



dimensional information directly (it 
can only imply it). But the usual 
reliability of these processes in animal 
vision implies that they rely on natural 
constraints or assumptions about the 
world to derive unambiguous output. 
Identifying and using such constraints 
are important goals of modern com- 
puter-vision research. This, in turn, 
calls for seeking out properties of the 
physical work that could help a visual 
process do useful work, making math- 
ematical models of their interaction 
with visual phenomena, and imple- 
menting the mathematics in computer 
programs. One such result that illus- 
trates the kind of computations at this 
level is the computation of relative 
depth from optic flow (see figure 2). 
The step beyond intrinsic images is 
a large one; although they contain 
physical information, they are still 
image-like entities not yet described 
in terms of objects. Two of the most 
important visual phenomena are mo- 
tion and texture, which transmit much 
information about the objects and 
surfaces in a scene. One of the most 
active areas of computer-vision 
research is the extraction of informa- 
tion from motion or from optic flow 
of the visual field on our retina as an 
object or the viewer moves. It is also 
a particularly good illustration of the 
symbiosis that can take place between 



psychology and computer vision. 

Researchers basically agree that the 
higher abstraction levels in a general 
computer-vision system must contain 
data structures representing aspects 
of the domain from which the scene 
originates. The resulting problems in 
knowledge representation are inter- 
esting in a wide variety of AI applica- 
tions. For example, computer model- 
ing of three-dimensional rigid solids 
is by no means a solved problem ex- 
cept for certain manufactured objects. 
Also, representing naturally occurring 
shapes and volumes so that they can 
be matched to their geometric 
counterparts in intrinsic images is still 
an open question. 

High abstraction levels pose several 
other difficulties. Perception goes on 
through time, and yet representing 
processes through time is an area of 
advanced Al research. 

The contribution of high-level 
knowledge and inferential procedures 
to the vision process is still a mystery. 
It seems certain that information does 
not simply flow "bottoms up" (that is, 
sequentially from low-level to high- 
level) through the visual system, as it 
did in Roberts's first system. Nor is vi- 
sion merely controlled hallucination, 
with the abstract representations dic- 
tating our perceptions as they do in 
dreams, subject to minor corrections 



from incoming data. The upper levels 
of abstraction hierarchy must support 
information flow in both directions, 
and a bottleneck in current computer- 
vision research is achieving useful in- 
teraction between the lower, image- 
like representations and the higher, 
symbolic ones. 

State-of-the-Art Examples 

Two examples will illustrate the opera- 
tion of computer vision in the sort of 
abstraction hierarchy introduced in 
the last section. The three-dimen- 
sional MOSAIC system at Carnegie- 
Mellon University, developed by 
Marty Herman and T&keo Kanade, can 
reconstruct three-dimensional repre- 
sentations of buildings from two aerial 
views— using stereo to provide depth 
information— or from a single view- 
using advance knowledge about the 
nature of the input scene to provide 
depth information. Figures 3a through 
3d show the operation of the mono- 
cular version of the algorithm. 

The MOSAIC system uses an edge 
operator to find intensity discon- 
tinuities, which contain much image 
information in a single input image 
(see figure 3a). Because the image has 
a baffling number of such "edge 
elements," the system sends the out- 
put to a post-processing routine that 
identifies edges that are likely to con- 




Figure 3a: Aerial view of a city park and buildings provided 
as a single input image to the MOSAIC {see text) system. 



Figure 3b: Output of an edge-finding algorithm applied to the 
image of figure 3a. 



250 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



VISION 



tribute to interesting structures in the 
image (see figure 3b). Several stages 
of processing then link the edges into 
two-dimensional structures using stan- 
dard edge-linking technology and in- 
formation about the way lines meet 
to form vertices in polyhedral scenes. 
And then the edges are linked into 
three-dimensional structures— using 
information about gravity support, 
the perspective imaging process, and 
other facts describing the physical 
scene domain and the optics of image 
formation. Figure 3c shows the result 
of this processing: a perspective view 
of a three-dimensional "wireframe" 
representation of edges in the scene. 

The next stage of processing relates 
the wireframes to stored representa- 
tions of three-dimensional solid 
models. In a sense, the solid models 
are the final output of the program, 
with two important additions. First, 
the system can relate new image in- 
formation to its existing model data 
structures, which it can refine as it ac- 
quires the new images. Second, the 
system can, using standard computer- 
graphics technology, map the flat 
image onto the surfaces of the stored 
three-dimensional models. The sys- 
tem can then display three "painted" 
models from another angle, as shown 
in figure 3d. 

Work continues on the extraction 



and identification of meaningful parts 
of an image. This process is called 
segmentation, which is typified in the VI- 
SIONS (Visual Integration by Seman- 
tic Interpretation of Natural Scenes) 
system at the University of Massachu- 
setts. The VISIONS system's sophisti- 
cated programs use models of a 
specific domain (rural, outdoor 
scenes of houses, trees, etc.) and 
knowledge about that domain. 

In this work, the goal is to segment 
a color image (as in figure 4a) into 
regions that correspond to meaning- 
ful objects or substances in the image. 
The process involves extracting 
straight lines (see figure 4b), and 
regions of related color characteristics 
(see figure 4c). The VISIONS system 
uses interpretation rules that incor- 
porate knowledge about the scene 
domain (for example, that a driveway 
is not found silhouetted against the 
sky, or that a house's roof is above its 
walls) in cooperation with the image- 
guided segmentation processes. 
These interpretations make the 
segmentation process more reliable, 
by indicating, for example, when 
regions may be merged or should be 
split. For example, in figure 4c the 
system has colored regions that it has 
hypothesized, using interpretation 
rules, to be shutters. Foliage is an im- 
portant component of these scenes, 



and VISIONS has a set of feature ex- 
tractors and recognizers to allow 
reliable identification of foliage, 
despite its many different ap- 
pearances. 

Figure 5 shows the final labeling of 
another input scene with regions 
identified as sky, foliage, grass, wall, 
shutters, roof, and regions (in black) 
that are uninterpreted due to the lack 
of a symbolic model in the current 
system or deviation of the scene's ap- 
pearance from that predicted by the 
model. VISIONS currently models 
some 20 major objects and object col- 
lections such as "house" and "house 
scene," and a larger number of object 
parts such as "roof" and "shutters." 

The two examples of current sys- 
tems show the beginning of under- 
standing the competence issues in vi- 
sion: We know what kinds of entities 
need to be computed. However, each 
of these examples requires huge 
amounts of computer time. Most re- 
searchers believe that the perfor- 
mance problem in vision will only be 
solved through parallel computation. 

Challenges 

from Animal Vision 

One of the most promising directions 
for the study of parallel processing 
has centered around studies of 

[continued) 



V ~~J^ \ 








Figure 3c: A "wireframe" of linked line segments in three 
dimensions resulting from several sorts of processing applied to 
the data of figure 3b. 



Figure 3d: Computer-graphics techniques use the original photo 
and the three-dimensional models extracted by further processing 
of the wireframe data of figure 3c. resulting in a convincing 
reconstruction of the scene: \Courtesy of Marty Herman and 
Takeo Kanade at Carnegie-Mellon University.] 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 251 



VISION 



human and animal vision. Unlike 
robot vision, where many of the com- 
plexities of sensing the environment 
can be manipulated by tailoring the 
environment and using special imag- 
ing techniques, animal vision must 
somehow analyze time-varying photo- 
metric data in its full complexity in 
real time. Furthermore, biological sys- 
tems use neural-processing elements 
that are six orders of magnitude 
slower than silicon components. 
Despite all these apparent disad- 



vantages, animal systems succeed ad- 
mirably. Experiments with human 
subjects show that they can make a 
variety of behavioral responses to 
visual stimuli in a few hundred milli- 
seconds. Thus, the biological system, 
somewhat embarrassingly, embodies 
solutions to problems that still plague 
vision researchers. This situation has 
lured researchers to tackle the prob- 
lem of modeling the human visual sys- 
tem head-on, in the hopes of dis- 
covering its secrets. Such researchers 




(4a) 




(4b) (4c) 

Figure 4: [a) An outdoor scene to be analyzed by the VISIONS computer-vision 
system, (b) Straight lines extracted from the data of 4a. (c) Regions extracted from the 
data of 4a. 



typically have a wide range of cross- 
disciplinary interests and are joining 
to make progress in the separate 
fields of psychology, neuroscience, 
and computer science. We shall 
describe some of the more interesting 
of the many new results from these 
disciplines. 

Since humans are very good at 
visual tasks, researchers were sur- 
prised to find that, for some tasks, in- 
formation can be processed in 
parallel, but for rather modest in- 
creases in complexity, the processing 
became sequential (see reference 2). 
Tteisman describes visual displays of 
letters about which subjects were 
asked questions of the form "Does 
the display contain a T?" (See figure 
6.) Most subjects can answer this 
question in a few hundred millisec- 
onds, independent of the number of 
letters displayed (see the lowest 
dashed lines of figure 6). However, if 
we change the question to "Does the 
display contain a red T?" the time 
taken to answer becomes linearly 
dependent on the number of letters 
displayed. From this we conclude that 
the brain processes certain primitive 
features in parallel but processes con- 
junctions of these features serially. 

We still lack a detailed explanation 
for this result, but one hypothesis is 
as follows. It may be uneconomical for 
the visual system to check stored pro- 
totypes against spatial positions. A 
faster way would be for the brain to 
build an abstract representation that 
is independent of the precise point in 
space where the feature is located. 
Thus, we hypothesize that the brain 
builds a representation for a T if there 
is one or more TS anywhere in the 
visual field. In a similar process, the 
brain builds a representation for per- 
ceived color values, such as "red." 
Thus, the brain could answer ques- 
tions concerning these features direct- 
ly. In contrast, questions about con- 
junctions of features cannot be han- 
dled by this scheme, since informa- 
tion about spatial location is not pres- 
ent in the abstract representation. 
One idea, termed the searchlight hypo- 
thesis (see reference 3), is that the brain 

[continued) 



252 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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VISION 




Figure 5: Regions extracted and labeled by VISIONS for another house scene. 
\Figures 4 and 5 courtesy of Allen Hanson, Edward Riseman, and the 
VISIONS project at the University of Massachusetts] 



sequentially focuses on spatial loca- 
tions from which the features are 
derived. In this manner, if the T" fea- 
ture and the "red" feature occur 
together, then the question can be 
answered affirmatively. The separa- 
tion of data into two different levels 
of abstraction (spatially organized and 
nonspatially organized) seems to be 
a fundamental design decision that 
allows the brain to do its job quickly. 
Mishkin and colleagues performed 
another experiment that points to this 
organization (see reference 4). They 
made selective lesions in different 
parts of a monkey's cortex. Monkeys 
with lesions in one area of the brain 
performed a feature-recognition ex- 
periment at chance levels (in a 
statistically random manner) but had 
no trouble with a spatial-location ex- 
periment. In contrast, monkeys with 
lesions in another area performed a 
spatial-location task at chance levels 



but had no trouble with a feature- 
recognition experiment. This startling 
result shows that an important psy- 
chophysical property may have a 
distinct locus in animal brains. 

Coding Physical 
Constraints as Hardware 

Concurrent with these biological and 
psychological results, researchers in 
computer vision have been exploring 
parallel models of computation that 
handle features in similar ways. In ad- 
dition, these models have to grapple 
with many difficulties of noise and 
missing information: A shape outline 
or a feature like a straight line is only 
represented in an image by partial 
and conflicting evidence mixed with 
confusing noise. 

To overcome this problem, we use 
the Hough transform (see reference 
5). The Hough transform includes a 

(continued) 



254 BYTE* APRIL I985 



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VISION 



wide variety of clustering histogram 
analysis and estimation strategies, all 
of which transform data so that phe- 
nomena of interest form clusters. 

Consider an example using the 
Hough transform for line detection. 
To detect lines in an image we must 
first detect local intensity differences 
or edges. Figure 7a shows the Hough 
transform applied to the image of a 



Rubik's cube, in which intensity dif- 
ferences could be caused by an ac- 
tual edge of the cube, a shadow, a 
label, and so on. If we call the image 
f(x,y) and the horizontal and vertical 
intensity differences h(x,y) and v{x,y), 
then one way to compute the inten- 
sity differences uses the values of 
neighboring picture elements in the 

[continued) 



1600 



1200 



800 



CONJUNCTION 



DISJUNCTION 




15 
DISPLAY SIZE 



30 



Figure 6: Reaction time in milliseconds for experiments described in text. In recognizing 
a single feature such as "red" or the letter T", a subject's reaction time is constant if 
the feature is in the display (POS). 1/ it is absent or. more importantly, if the stimulus 
is a conjunction {{£.. red X depicted by a solid line), the response time increases linearly 
with the size of the display. \Figure taken from Ireisman (see reference 2).| 



256 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



: 







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Inquiry 35 



VISION 



following manner: 

h{xy) = flx+1. y-\) - f(x-\, y-\) 

+ 2x/(x+l. y) - 2x/(x-l, y) 
+/(x+l, (+1) - /(x-1, sj+1) 

vfrjrt = /(x-1, y+1) - /(x-1. y-1) 

+ 2x/(x, y+\) - 2xf(x, y-\) 
+ f(X+l y+\) - /(x+1, y-\) 

The edge finder reports an edge if 
the magnitud e of th e intensity dif- 
ferences (m=V(ft 2 +v 2 )) is greater than 
a given threshold value. We will give 
the orientation of the edge as 6, 
where 0=arctan(Wv). 

Next, we accumulate the local 
edges into straight lines. This ac- 
cumulation is essentially a voting pro- 
cess, in which each edge element 
"votes" for the lines that could have 
caused it. Thus, in figure 7b, the edge 
element centered at the point (Xo,y ). 
with the orientation 0, votes for a line 
that we can describe as (q.O), where 
q=x cos Q+y sin 6. 

After each edge element votes for 
the lines that could have caused it, the 
line with the most votes is presumed 
to be an actual line of the image, 
rather than an artifact or noise. 

To facilitate this accumulation pro- 
cess, place all the values of (q,6) into 
another twodimensional array, with q 




and as coordinate axes (see figure 
7c). The brightness of each cell in 
figure 7c is proportional to the 
number of edge elements voting for 
a line at that particular value of (q,0). 
That is, the brighter the cell, the more 
likely the image actually has a line 
with those values of (q,6). 

Tb sum up, suppose the feature 
detector applied to a point (x,y) of the 
image responds with a local edge 
orientation and a measure of edge 
contrast. Then one version of the 
algorithm is as follows. 

For each point (x,y) in the image, do 
the following two steps: 

1) Apply the detector to get at (x,y) 

2) If edge contrast exceeds some 
threshold: 

compute q=x cos d+y sin $' 
increment LineParams \q,0\ 

Several implementations of the 
Hough transform are possible (see 
reference 6). We have just described 
a straightforward sequential computer 
implementation that represents 
parameter space in an array. This rep- 
resentation is costly for transforms 
with multiple parameters, since it 
demands space exponential to the 
number of parameters— although re- 



^ 


s ^LOCAL EDGE ELEMENT 
N / (INTENSITY DIFFERENCE) 






f \t*o*yo> 


y 


X 




/ \ 
p / x 
/ \ 




^ 




X 



searchers have made progress in im- 
plementations of the accumulating 
parameter space (described above) 
using hash tables or content-address- 
able memories, which use less space. 

Finally the Hough transform can be 
implemented in massively parallel 
computing networks in which prewir- 
ing accomplishes all the voting in one 
time step. 

The general notion of capturing 
functionality in terms of connection 
patterns is known as connectionism and 
is sparking a great deal of interest in 
different disciplines. One issue raised 
is computational. How is the com- 
putation carried out in very large net- 
works with complex constraints? 
Recently, progress has been made by 
several groups headed by Kirkpatrick, 
Hopfield, Hinton, Sejnowski, Geman, 
and Geman (see references 7 through 
10 and Geoffrey E. Hinton's article 
"Learning in Parallel Networks" on 
page 265). The thrust of this work is 
that constraints can be cast as local 
changes in "energy" and that the 
computing units can be turned on or 
off to minimize energy. 

The neural network also shows a 
general way of representing informa- 

[coniinued) 




(7a) 



(7b) 



(7c) 



Figure 7: (a) Results of applying a computer-vision edge operator to the image of a Rubik's cube, (b) The geometrical constraint that 
relates a local edge element (Xo,y Q ,Q), shown by a circle, to a line, denoted by q and 6. For every edge element in an image, a 
unique line can be determined, (c) Each edge element "votes" for the lines that may have caused it, as shown in this plot of q and 
values. The brightest accumulations of values for q and $ indicate the most likely lines in the actual image. 



258 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



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Inquiry 395 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 259 



VISION 



tion known as value encoding. On a se- 
quential computer, a variable can 
have only one value at a time. A 
parallel computer, however may need 
to simultaneously access many values 
of a variable. In value encoding, we 
represent the different possible 
values of a variable as discrete cells 
or "intervals." The number of cells 
used determines the accuracy in the 
representation. 

For example we can represent the 
parameters for the edge element of 



figure 7b as discrete intervals 
centered at (x it y { ), with a width of 
(Ax.Ay) (see figure 8a). We ca-n also 
represent the line parameters of 
figure 7c as discrete intervals centered 
at (Qi.Bi). with a width of (Aq.AO) (see 
figure 8b). This idea was suggested by 
Horace Barlow at Cambridge and is 
being pursued by D. H. Ballard and 
Jerome Feldman at the University of 
Rochester. We can then hard-wire the 
accumulation (or voting) process from 
figure 7 directly into hardware. Thus, 



Ay 



(8a) 



LOCAL EDGE ELEMENTS 
(INTENSITY DIFFERENCES) 



tx:. y, ) 



POSSIBLE LINES 



HARDWARE 

CONNECTIONS 

FROM 

COLINEAR 

EDGE UNITS 



(8b) 




□ • 



PARAMETER INTERVAL 



= PROCESSOR 



Figure 8: The "voting process' of figure 7 can be directly encoded in hardware using 
interval encodings, (a) For each of a discrete number of (x,y) values with bounds 
(Ax.Ay). we assign a specific processor, (b) For each of a discrete number of (q.S) 
values with bounds (Aq.AO). we assign a specific processor. 1/ enough colinear edge 
units are "turned on'.' the line that encompasses all of those edges will be turned on. 
This strategy may be impractical for VLSI (very-large-scale integration) designs, but it is 
realizable in the brain, which has approximately 10 10 neurons and approximately 10 4 
connections per neuron. 



in figure 8a we assign a distinct pro- 
cessor for all the values of [x.y] that 
fall within the boundaries (Ax.Ay) and 
a specified range of 0. In figure 8b, we 
assign a distinct processor for all the 
values of (q.O) that fall within the 
boundaries (Aq.AO). Each processor 
can either be on or off, based on a 
modification of the algorithm we de- 
scribed earlier: 

For each edge unit, turn it on if its in- 
put exceeds some threshold. For each 
line unit [q.O). turn it on if its input ex- 
ceeds some threshold. That is, if 
enough colinear edge units are 
"turned on" (figure 8a), the line that 
encompasses all of those edges will 
be turned on (see figure 8b); that is, 
the system will draw a line with those 
parameters. 

This realization of the Hough trans- 
formation shows how complex wiring 
carrying simple excitation can replace 
the complex information flow of 
voting. Nets of fairly simple comput- 
ing units with highly structured con- 
nections carrying simple excitatory 
and inhibitory levels can provide a 
uniform architecture for computation 
at many levels of abstraction, from 
early vision to symbolic and cognitive 
levels. 

We have tried to highlight some of 
the various issues that arise in these 
kinds of parallel models. However, at 
this point the reader may still be 
wondering how applicable this kind of 
computation is to a general vision sys- 
tem. The first-order answer is that 
generality is achieved through hierar- 
chies. The line computation can serve 
as a subnetwork in a much larger net- 
work that spans the vision abstraction 
hierarchy (see figure 1). Hierarchies 
may be a ubiquitous strategy for 
organizing information in animals. 
Figure 9 shows Kiel's ontological 
("related to or based upon being or 
existence") hierarchy of children's 
preferences (see reference 11). Kiel's 
hierarchy is also evident in eye-move- 
ment experiments, during which adult 
subjects showed the same kind of at- 
tentional preferences. Hierarchical 
organization may also be traceable to 
brain anatomy although data is only 



260 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



VISION 



available for the visual areas (see ref- 
erence 12). Hierarchies may be a 
global organization feature of the 
cortex. 

Conclusion 

The most important breakthrough in 
computer vision in the past decade 
has been a broad understanding of 
what has to be computed and how 
the computations are organized. Cur- 
rent research is shaped by the dis- 
covery that vision primitives (in- 
termediate images) form a natural 
hierarchy and that the amount of 
computation required to build this 
hierarchy is enormous. Now that we 
have an understanding of what to 
compute, the crucial issue is that of 
computing it in real time. Throughout 
the decade there has been a close 
relationship between "pure" vision 
research, which ignores biological 
constraints, and that which directly at- 
tempts to explain how the animal vi- 
sion system works. The underlying in- 
tent of this article has been to show 
that ideas connected with animal vi- 
sion, contrary to many earlier expec- 
tations, are playing an increasingly 
compelling role in shaping computer- 
vision research. The current notion of 
hierarchy of representations was de- 
veloped without direct connections to 
animal research, but concurrent re- 
search shows that animal brains 
already incorporate hierarchical rep- 
resentations as a fundamental design 
principle. Furthermore, it seems like- 
ly that the biological system has also 
solved the parallel-computation prob- 
lem that is emerging as the issue for 
formal vision studies. Thus we can an- 
ticipate a profusion of cross-dis- 
ciplinary research efforts in the 
decade ahead, in the drive to realize 
practical, real-time visual per- 
ception. ■ 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ballard, D. H., and C. M. Brown. Computer 

Vision, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1982. 

Barrow, H. G., and J. M. Tfenenbaum. Pra- 

ceedings, IEEE 69, 1981, pages 572-595. 

Brady, M. Computing Surveys 14, 1982, pages 

3-72. 

Hanson, A. R., and E. M. Riseman, eds. 

Computer Vision Systems. New York: 



ALL THINGS 



THINGS WITH 
SPATIAL LOCATION 




AGGREGATES INTENTIONAL NONINTENTIONAL 

S EVENTS EVENTS 

N v . \ 




X 



\ 

^fight thunderstorm 

ki ss sunri se 



car 
refrigerator 



pig 
rabbit 



Figure 9: Kiel's ontological hierarchy established via testing of children. 



Academic Press, 1977. 

Marr, D. Vision. San Francisco: W.H. 

Freeman and Co., 1982. 

Nevatia, R. Machine Perception. New York: 

Prentice-Hall, 1982. 



REFERENCES 

1. Roberts, L. G., in J. P. Tippett et al.. eds. 
Optica/ and Electro-Optical Interaction Processing. 
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965. 

2. Tteisman. A. M. "The Role of Attention 
in Object Perception." In O. J. Braddick and 
A. C Sleigh, Physical and Biological Processing 
of Images. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1983. 

3. Crick, F. 'The Function of the Thalamic 
Reticular Complex: The Searchlight Hy- 
pothesis," submitted to Proceedings of the Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences, 1984. 

4. Mishkin, M., L. G. Ungerleider, and K. A. 
Macko. "Object Vision and Spatial Vision: 
Two Cortical Pathways," Trends in Neuro- 
Sciences, October 1983. 

5. Duda, R. Q. and P. E. Hart. 'The Use of 
the Hough Transform to Detect Lines and 
Curves in Pictures," Communications of the 
ACM #15, vol. 1, January 1972, pages 
11-15. 

6. Ballard, D. H. "Parameter Networks: 
Towards a Theory of Low-Level Vision," Pro- 
ceedings, 1th IfCAI, Vancouver. B.C., August 
1981; also appeared as "Parameter Net- 



works." Artificial Melligence 22, 1984. pages 
23 5-267. 

7. Kirkpatrick, S„ C D. Gelatt. and M. P. 
Vecchi. "Optimization by Simulated An- 
nealing," Science 220, 1983, pages 671-680. 

8. Hopfield. J. J. "Neural Networks and 
Physical Systems with Emergent Collective 
Computational Abilities," Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences USA 79, 1982, 
pages 2 5 54-2 558. 

9. Hinton, G. E. ( and T. J. Sejnowski. "Op- 
timal Perceptual Inference," Proceedings, 
IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 
Conference, Washington, DC, June 1983, 
pages 448-453. 

10. Geman, S., and D Geman. "Stochastic 
Relaxation, Gibbs Distributions, and the 
Bayesian Restoration of Images," TR, 
Brown University, September 1983. 

1 1 . Kiel, F C Semantic and Conceptual Develop- 
ment: An Ontological Perspective. Cambridge, 
MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. 

12. Van Essen, D C, and J. H. R. Maunsell. 
"Hierarchical Organization and Functional 
Streams in the Visual Cortex," Trends in 
NeuroSciences, September 1983. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Preparation of this paper was supported 
by the Defense Advanced Research Proj- 
ects Agency under Grant N00014-82-K- 
0193 and NSF Grant MCS-8203028. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 261 



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262 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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Inquiry 322 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



LEARNING 

IN PARALLEL 

NETWORKS 



by Geoffrey E. Hinton 



Simulating learning in a probabilistic system 



THE BRAIN is an incredibly powerful 
computer. The cortex alone contains 
over I0 10 neurons, each connected to 
thousands of others. All of your 
knowledge is probably stored in the 
strengths of these connections, which 
somehow give you the effortless abil- 
ity to understand English, to make 
sensible plans, to recall relevant facts 
from fragmentary cues, and to inter- 
pret the patterns of light and dark on 
the back of your eyeballs as real 
three-dimensional scenes. By com- 
parison, modern computers do these 
things very slowly, if at all. They ap- 
pear very smart when multiplying 
long numbers or storing millions of ar- 
bitrary facts, but they are remarkably 
bad at doing what any five-year-old 
can. 

One possible explanation is that we 
don't program computers suitably. We 
are just so ignorant about what it 
takes to understand English or inter- 
pret visual images that we don't know 
the appropriate data structures and 
procedures to put into the machine. 
This is what most people who study 
artificial intelligence (AI) believe, and 
over the last 20 years they have made 



a great deal of progress in reducing 
our ignorance in these areas. 

Another possible explanation is that 
brains and computers work different- 
ly. Perhaps brains have evolved to be 
very good at a particular style of com- 
putation that is necessary in everyday 
life but hard to program on a conven- 
tional computer. Perhaps the fact that 
brains store knowledge as connection 
strengths makes them particularly 
adept at weighing many conflicting 
and cooperating considerations very 
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judgment or interpretation. Of course, 
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neurons and their patterns of connec- 
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In this issue Jerome A. Feldman de- 
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parallel networks could recognize ob- 
jects (see "Connections" on page 
277). I will describe one old and one 
new theory of how learning could oc- 
cur in these brain-like networks. 
Please remember that these theories 
are extreme idealizations; the real 
brain is much more complicated. 

Associating Inputs 
with Outputs 

Imagine a black box that has a set of 
input terminals and a set of output 

{continued) 
Geoffrey E. Hinton is an assistant professor 
of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon 
University. He can be reached at the Com- 
puter Science Department, Carnegie-Mellon 
University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 265 



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Ideally, the black box 
will capture some neat 
regularity in its 
connection strengths. 



terminals. Each terminal can be 
clamped into either of two states, ac- 
tive or inactive (I or 0). We can show 
the black box what we would like it 
to do by repeatedly clamping a com- 
bination of Is and Os on the input ter- 
minals and another combination of Is 
and Os on the output terminals (each 
combination is called a vector). When 
we have done this for many I/O (input/ 
output) pairs, we would like the black 
box to automatically set its output ter- 
minals into the correct state when we 
clamp a vector on the input terminals. 
Ideally if there is some neat regulari- 
ty in the mapping from input vectors 
to output vectors, we would like the 
black box to "capture" this regularity 
in its internal connection strengths in 
order to give the "correct" output vec- 
tor for input vectors it has never seen 
before. This kind of black box would 
be a very useful module to have with- 
in an intelligent system. 

If the black box contains only direct 
connections from input terminals to 
output terminals, there is a beautifully 
simple learning procedure that ad- 
justs the weights on these connec- 
tions until every input vector causes 
the appropriate output vector. The 
learning procedure has two phases 
that keep alternating. In phase l, we 
clamp an input vector on the input 
terminals and an output vector on the 
output terminals. Then we increment 
by a small amount, 6, the weights of 
all connections that have both their 
input and output terminals active. In 
phase 2, we clamp the same input 
vector, but we let the black box 
decide for itself what output vector to 
produce, using the rule that an out- 
put terminal turns on if the sum of the 
weights on its connections from active 
input terminals is positive. We then 



266 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



inquiry 428 



PARALLEL NETWORKS 



decrement by 6 ail the connections that 
have both their input and output ter- 
minals active. If the network produces 
exactly the right output, these decre- 
ments will exactly undo all the incre- 
ments we made in phase 1, because 
exactly the same pairs of input and 
output terminals will be active in the 
two phases. If, however, the network 
produces the wrong output in phase 
2, some of the weights that were in- 
cremented will not be decremented 
or vice versa, so some weights will 
change. 

The learning procedure I have de- 
scribed is a version of the Widrow- 
Hoff or "perception convergence" 
procedure It has a remarkable prop- 
erty: If we keep cycling through all the 
pairs of input and output vectors 
using this two-phase procedure for 
each pair, we will converge on a set 
of weights that causes the right out- 
put vector for every input vector if any 
such set of weights exists. The big disap- 
pointment (which led people in AI to 
abandon this kind of model) is that for 
most interesting problems there is no 
suitable set of weights. The relation- 
ship between the input and output 
vectors is just too complicated to be 
captured by a system that has direct 
connections between input and out- 
put terminals. At the very least, there 
must be intermediate layers within the 
black box, and units in these layers 
must learn to extract a hierarchy of 
"features" of the input vector that can 
eventually cause the right output. 

Here is an example of a relatively 
simple task that requires intermediate 
units. The input consists of two 8-bit 
vectors, one of which is a shifted ver- 
sion of the other. Only shifts one 
place to the left or one place to the 
right are allowed. There are two out- 
put terminals, one for each possible 
shift, and the black box must turn on 
the correct output terminal for any ap- 
propriately related pair of input vec- 
tors. The task sounds easy until you 
consider that any one of the input 
bits, considered in isolation, provides 
no information about what the output 
should be. Moreover, simply adding 
up evidence from all the separate in- 

{continued) 




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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 267 



PARALLEL NETWORKS 



put bits is useless. The task can be 
done only if you consider combina- 
tions of bits in one vector with bits in 
the other, which requires intermediate 
units that extract informative com- 
binations. Figures la and lb show a 
collection of useful intermediate fea- 
ture detectors that work well together 
for performing this task. 

When we try to extend the simple 
learning procedure to networks con- 
taining intermediate units, more com- 
plications arise because we do not 
know in advance how we want the in- 
termediate units to behave So instead 
of just fixing some weights that will 
make the output terminals behave in 
the way that we specify the learning 
algorithm must also decide under 



what circumstances each of the inter- 
mediate units should be active. This 
amounts to creating intermediate rep- 
resentations. Several more recent 
learning procedures can do this. 1 
shall describe one that Terry 
Sejnowski and 1 discovered. It is only 
guaranteed to work in networks of a 
rather special kind, which I will now 
describe. 

Networks That Minimize 
Their Energy 

The kind of network we have been 
considering so far consists of layers 
of units in which units in one layer are 
connected to units only in contiguous 
layers. More complex networks have 
cross-talk within a layer and feedback 




Figure la: A network with 16 input terminals, 12 intermediate units, and 2 output 
terminals. The boldface units show which bits are on in a typical pair of input and 
output vectors. The 8-bit vector at the bottom has been shifted one place to the left 
(with wraparound) to produce the &-bit vector immediately above it. Witft these two 
vectors as the input, the correct output vector (shown at the top of the figure) has the 
left unit active to represent a left shift. Each of the 12 intermediate units is connected 
to all the input and output units, but only one set of connections is shown. The 
intermediate units also have a fixed threshold, which is subtracted from their net input 
before the decision is made to turn them on or off. 



from later layers to earlier ones. It is 
generally very hard to analyze the 
behavior of such networks, but John 
Hopfield at Cal Tech (reference 1) has 
shown that there is an interesting 
special case that behaves in a very 
useful way. In a Hopfield net, the units 
make their decisions asynchronously, 
the communication between units is 
instantaneous, and all the connections 
are symmetrical; the effect of unit i" on 
unit j is the same as the effect of unit 
/ on unit i. Given these restrictions, the 
various possible states of the whole 
network form a space like a bumpy 
surface and the current state of the 
network behaves like a ball bearing 
placed on this surface— it moves 
downhill into the nearest local minimum. 
Each point in the surface corresponds 
to a pattern of active and inactive 
units in the network, and the height 
of the surface at that point represents 
the "energy" of that pattern of activi- 
ty, where the energy of a pattern is 
defined as minus the sum of all the 
weights on connections between pairs 
of active units. Therefore, if two units 
have a big positive weight between 
them, patterns in which they are both 
active will have low energy; it is pat- 
terns like this into which the network 
will settle. Conversely, a negative 
weight between two units will make a 
big positive contribution to the 
energy when they are both on, so the 
network will tend to avoid such states. 

Figure 2 shows a small network 
whose lowest energy state is -8. Can 
you figure out which units are on and 
which are off in this state? You will 
always end up at an energy minimum 
if you start with a random state and 
then apply the following rule to each 
unit in turn (in any order): If the sum 
of the weights on the connections to 
other currently active units is positive, 
turn it on; otherwise, turn it off. If you 
apply this procedure a few times, you 
will discover that there is another 
minimum with an energy of -3 and 
that once the network has settled into 
this state it will just stay there. 

Networks of this type can be used 
to associate input vectors with output 
vectors. To provide the input, we 
clamp a subset of the units into their 



268 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



PARALLEL NETWORKS 



on or off states, and, once the rest of 
the network has settled into an energy 
minimum with this input vector 
clamped, we treat the states of an- 
other subset of the units as the out- 
put. In figure 2, for example, we could 
clamp the three bottom units into the 
active state to represent the input vec- 
tor (1, 1. 1); we would get the output 
vector {1, 0) by letting the network set- 
tle and then reading the states of the 
top two units. 

To teach the network a particular set 
of I/O pairs, we would need to create 
an appropriate energy landscape— we 
would need to choose weights so that 
for each clamped input vector the sys- 
tem had an energy minimum that 
yielded the correct output vector. 
Choosing such weights is not an easy 
task, and to make matters worse, we 
might end up with an energy land- 
scape in which there were many dif- 
ferent local minima for each clamped 
input; each input vector might give 
many different outputs depending on 
the energy minimum into which the 
system happened to settle. In figure 
2, for example the input vector (0, 0, 
0) can generate two different output 
vectors depending on the initial states 
of the middle units and the order in 
which decisions get made. 

A Probabilistic Network 

If the same input is going to produce 
different outputs on different occa- 
sions, we would at least like to have 
some control over the probabilities. 
It would be nice, for example if we 
could guarantee that deeper minima 
would be found more often than shal- 
lower ones. It would be even better 
if we could guarantee that the relative 
probability of ending up in two dif- 
ferent minima depended only on their 
relative depths. We could then control 
the probabilities of getting particular 
outputs by manipulating the energy 
landscape (i.e., by changing the 
weights). 

Once again, a physical analogy is 
helpful: If we have a ball bearing on 
a bumpy surface and we shake the 
whole system up and down, the ball 
bearing will be able to jump over the 

{continued) 





Figure lb: The weights that are learned by the 12 intermediate units. The black and 
white rectangles in the bottom two rows of a unit represent the weights on its 
connections to the input terminals. The sizes of the rectangles indicate the magnitudes of 
the weights. Black indicates a negative weight. The two weights at the top of each unit 
show how it affects the two output terminals. The weights all start at and change by 
very small steps. Notice that all 1 2 units detect different combinations of active input 
terminals and that these combinations are generally sensible predictors of the global shift 
for which the unit "votes'/ 





1 ~ 3 I 




1 \ 
4 / >*■ 


2 /~ X 

\ -3 f 


I 

2 

1 


/ / ] 
I 1 2 


\ -1 / -2 


\ 1 




v_y -i 











Figure 2: A simple network with three input units at the bottom, two intermediate 
units in the middle, and two output units at the top. All the connections are 
symmetrical 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 269 



PARALLEL NETWORKS 



barriers that separate shallow minima 
from deep ones; the ball bearing will 
spend most of its time in the deeper 
minima, even though it will occasion- 
ally sample higher energy states. If we 
shake for a while in just the right way, 
a useful simplification occurs: We ap- 
proach a condition called "thermal 
equilibrium" in which the ball bearing 
is still moving from place to place, but 
the probability of finding it at any one 
place on the surface is stable and 
depends only on the height of the sur- 
face at that point— it doesn't depend 
on where the ball bearing started or 
on the shape of the energy landscape 
More precisely, the log of the prob- 
ability ratio of finding the ball bear- 
ing in two different states is propor- 
tional to the energy difference of 
those two states. Scott Kirkpatrick at 
IBM introduced the idea of using 
"thermal noise" to escape from local 
minima and to increase the chances 
of finding the deeper minima (see ref- 
erence 2). He has shown that for large 
problems in which the cost of a solu- 
tion is the analog of energy, an effec- 
tive method for finding low-cost solu- 
tions is to start with a lot of thermal 



noise and gradually reduce it— a pro- 
cess that he calls "simulated 
annealing." 

In our parallel networks it is easy to 
introduce the analog of thermal noise 
We just modify the decision rule that 
is used by the individual units. They 
still compute the sum of the weights 
on the connections coming from 
other active units, but instead of 
always turning on when this sum is 
positive and off when it is negative 
(which always reduces the energy of 
the network), they behave prob- 
abilistically, as shown in figure 3. 

Using this probabilistic decision 
rule, we can run networks in the 
following way: Clamp an input vector, 
let the remaining units turn on and off 
probabilistically until the network has 
reached thermal equilibrium, and 
then read the output vector. At 
equilibrium the output units will con- 
tinue to change states, but each out- 
put vector will have a fixed probability 
that does not vary with time. 

Research teams in fields as diverse 
as statistics (Stuart and Donald 
Geman), neuroscience (Terry 
Sejnowski), psychology (Paul 









1 










t 


/ 
/ 
/ J 














1 


1 / 

/ / 

i / 
1 / 
i / 














.5 
/ 

/ ! 

/ I 


/ 














/ ' 

/ i 

X t 

1 
1 
/ 










-6 


-4 


-2 





2 


4 


6 








a 










E k 





Figure 3: This shows the probability p k with which the kth unit is active. The 
quantity AE k is the sum of the weights on connections between the kth unit and other 
currently active units. The equation is 



Pk = 



1 



1+r 



T is the level of thermal noise in the network. The solid curve is for T = 1 and the 
dotted curve is for T = 0.25. 1/ the value of T is decreased, the unit becomes less 
probabilistic. When 7=0, the curve becomes a deterministic step function. 



Smolensky), and artificial intelligence 
are now investigating networks of this 
kind. Statisticians call them Markov 
Random Fields. At Carnegie-Mellon 
University we call our particular 
version the Boltzmann Machine, in 
honor of Ludwig Boltzmann. one 
of the founders of statistical 
mechanics. 

Learning Again 

We can now return to the issue of 
learning. First, we redefine the learn- 
ing task in probabilistic terms. For 
each possible input vector, we want 
to produce each possible output vec- 
tor with a certain probability. (Gen- 
erally, most of these probabilities will 
be close to and a few will be close 
to 1.) We can then train the network 
to behave in this way by alternating 
between two phases that are very 
similar to those used in the earlier 
learning rule. 

In phase 1 we tell the network about 
the desired probabilities by clamping 
pairs of input vectors and output vec- 
tors with the corresponding frequen- 
cies. Each time a pair of input and 
output vectors is clamped, we run the 
network until it is close to thermal 
equilibrium; we then run the network 
for a little extra time, modifying the 
weights in the following way: For each 
unit of time during which two units are 
both active, we increment the weight 
between them by 5. 

In phase 2 we clamp input vectors 
and let the network decide for itself 
what output vector to give. Once it 
has approached equilibrium, we run 
a little longer, as before, and now decre- 
ment by 5 the weights between pairs 
of active units. If we keep alternating 
between phase 1 and phase 2, show- 
ing the network all the various pairs 
of input and output vectors, the net 
change in the weight between any two 
units will be proportional to the dif- 
ference between the probability that 
the two units are both active in phase 
1 and the probability that they are 
both active in phase 2 (averaged over 
all I/O pairs). It is remarkable that 
when these probabilities are mea- 
sured at thermal equilibrium, their dif- 

{continued} 



270 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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ference is exactly the right quantity to 
use for changing the weights to make 
the behavior of the network in phase 
2 (when it is deciding for itself) mimic 
the behavior in phase 1 (when it is be- 
ing forced to behave in the desired 
way). Tb prove this it is necessary to 
define a measure of the difference 
between the probability distribution 
that is forced on the network in phase 
1 and the probability distribution that 
it exhibits in phase 2. Once the cor- 
rect measure has been defined, it can 
be shown that the measure is de- 
creased by changing each weight ac- 
cording to the above procedure. The 
proof can be found in reference 3. 
Figure 1 shows what the learning 
procedure can do when the task is to 
"recognize" the shift that was applied 
to one 8-bit vector to produce a sec- 
ond 8-bit vector. If you think this is an 
easy problem, remember that the net- 
work starts off with no preconcep- 
tions. It has no idea that neighboring 
input bits will have anything to do 
with each other, and it is not expect- 
ing this task any more than it is ex- 
pecting any other. If the very same 
network is presented with a complete- 
ly different combination of input and 
output vectors, it will create a different 
set of feature detectors that are ap- 
propriate for the different task. 

Making It Faster 

The first learning algorithm I de- 
scribed just changes weights to make 
units behave in prespecified ways. It 
cannot figure out what to do with in- 
ternal units whose required behavior 
is not specified from outside. The sec- 
ond learning algorithm is potentially 
much more powerful because it is 
able to decide how to use the inter- 
nal units to help achieve the required 
I/O mapping. It actually constructs 
simple internal representations. Un- 
fortunately, there is a heavy price to 
pay for this added power. The algo- 
rithm is currently extremely slow; the 
example in figure I requires hours of 
computer time. 

lb speed things up, Blake Ward, a 
graduate student at Carnegie-Mellon, 
has built a parallel machine contain- 
ing six Omnibyte 68000 boards, each 



of which has a copy of the entire net- 
work. Each board runs with a different 
input vector, and then all the boards 
agree on how to change the weights. 
This helps, but ultimately we would 
like to implement networks of these 
probabilistic units directly in silicon. 
Unlike current computers, these net- 
works are rather tolerant of localized 
hardware failures or fabrication 
errors; Carver Mead has pointed out 
that an analog implementation of the 
processing elements would positive- 
ly thrive on the kind of thermal noise 
that comes from running transistors 
at very low power. This might make 
it possible to build much larger chips 
than is currently feasible. However, 
developments like this are still a long 
way off, and they do not remove the 
need for more theoretical progress. 
Our current simulations are slow for 
three reasons: It is inefficient to 
simulate parallel networks with serial 
machines, it takes many decisions by 
each unit before a big network ap- 
proaches equilibrium, and it takes an 
inordinate number of examples of I/O 
pairs before a network can figure out 
what to represent with its internal 
units. Better hardware might solve the 
first problem, but more theoretical 
progress is needed on the other two. 
Only then will we be able to apply this 
kind of learning network to more 
realistic problems. ■ 

REFERENCES 

1. Hopfield, John J. "Neural Networks and 
Physical Systems with Emergent Collection 
Computational Abilities," Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences, 1982, vol. 79, 
pages 2 554-2 558. 

2. Kirkpatrick. S.. C D. Gellatt and M. D. 
Vecchi "Optimization by Simulated An- 
nealing," Science, 1983, vol. 220, pages 
671-680. 

3. Ackley, D. H. G. E. Hinton, and T.J. 
Sejnowski. "A Learning Algorithm for 
Boltzmann Machines." Cognitive Science, 
1985, vol. 9, pages 147-169. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Terry Sejnowski and 1 performed the 
research described here while we were 
supported by grants from the System 
Development Foundation. I thank the 
members of the Boltzmann Group at 
Carnegie-Mellon for helpful comments. 

APRIL 1985 'BYTE 273 



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editor of PC Magazine.) November 2/ 1984 



■■It is setting new standards for 
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Computers & Electronics Magazine 
November 1984 



274 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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APRIL I985 -BYTE 275 



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Inquiry 269 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



CONNECTIONS 

by Jerome A. Feldman 

Massive parallelism 
in natural and artificial intelligence 



A FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE of arti- 
ficial intelligence (AI) is that intelligent 
behavior can be simulated on digital 
computers. Great progress has been 
made in AI, with far-reaching practical 
and scientific consequences. Despite 
successes with quite specific prob- 
lems, however, many researchers feel 
that the general questions of intelli- 
gence have barely been touched. The 
field of AI is nowhere near possess- 
ing the ability to simulate the natural 
intelligence of a small child or even 
a simple animal. Yet the basic com- 
puting speed of modern computers is 
about a million times faster than the 
.firing rate of a neuron, which is in the 
millisecond range. 

The situation becomes even more 
striking when we consider the speed 
of human responses on simple tasks. 
When asked to carry out a wide range 
of tasks, such as naming a picture or 
deciding if some sound is an English 
noun, people can respond correctly 
in about half a second. This means 
that the brain, a device composed of 
neural elements with a basic com- 
puting speed of a few milliseconds, 
can solve difficult problems of vision 
and language in a few hundred milli- 
seconds (0.5 second - 500 millisec- 



onds), or about 100 steps. The best 
AI programs for these tasks are not 
nearly as general and require millions 
of computational time steps. Of 
course, the brain is a parallel device 
while essentially all of our existing 
machines are sequential, executing 
one instruction at a time. But what are 
the algorithms used in this massively 
parallel natural computer? 

The exploration of possible algo- 
rithms for this radically different ar- 
chitecture forms the cornerstone of a 
promising new branch of artificial in- 
telligence. Workers in the field use an 
abstract computer that is as similar as 
possible to the brain in structure and 
performance. This approach permits 
AI researchers to collaborate closely 
with colleagues in the brain and 
behavioral sciences; a good algorithm 
for some task on a computational 
model can also serve as a prototype 
theory for the mechanisms the brain 
uses on the same problem. Some psy- 
chologists have found that construct- 
ing massively parallel computational 
models to fit their data is far easier 
than constructing models based on 
sequential machines. The cycle is 
complete when AI researchers use ex- 
perimental results to guide the con- 



struction of parallel algorithms for 
various problems. 

In addition to the 100-step restric- 
tion, using the brain as a model has 
other computational consequences. 
For one thing, the timing constraints 
limit to a few bits the information that 
can be sent from one neuron to an- 
other. This means that units cannot 
pass the large symbolic structures 
common in AI and that the computa- 
tional richness must lie in the connec- 
tions among units; this has led to the 
use of the term "connectionist" to 
characterize these models. 

Using the brain as a model does 
allow for quite a lot of connections, 
up to about 10,000 per unit. The total 
number of neurons (about 100 billion) 
seems large but is actually a major 
limitation. Since vision has a million 
parallel inputs, any algorithm requir- 
ing n 2 units would not fit. Also, the 
brain grows no new units and essen- 

{continued) 

\erome A. Feldman (University of Rochester, 
Rochester, NY 14627) is a professor of com- 
puter science and holds a doctorate from 
Carnegie-Mellon University. His research in- 
terests include programming languages and 
systems, AI, and the problems of parallel 
algorithms and biological computation. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 277 



CONNECTIONS 



tially no new connections, placing 
severe constraints on models of learn- 
ing. Even with all these constraints, 
connectionist models are increasing- 
ly popular in AI research. 

A Visual Model 

A simple example can capture some 
of the flavor of connectionist com- 
putation. The cube shown in figure 1 
is a famous optical illusion attributed 
to the Swiss naturalist L. A. Necker 
(1832). Most people initially see the 
cube with the corner G closer to 
them, but you can also see it as a 
cube with vertex A closest to you. If 
you focus on vertex A and imagine it 
coming out of the paper toward you, 
the picture will flip to the A-closer 
cube. Notice that the flip takes less 
than a second. The Necker cube is in- 
teresting to psychologists because it 
will flip spontaneously between the 
two views if you keep looking at it. It 
is interesting to artificial-intelligence 
researchers because of what it tells us 
about parallel computation. 

You have observed how quickly the 
Necker cube flips, and you know how 
slow the underlying human com- 
puting elements are A sequential pro- 
gram running on such a slow device 
could probably not perform this task. 
But the situation is much more com- 
plex. Both human and computer vi- 
sion require several levels of process- 
ing (see ''Vision" by Dana H. Ballard 
and Christopher M. Brown on page 
245). Typical levels include edge 
segments, lines, vertices, faces, and 





/ 






H 
D 








/ 


B 


F 




G 


A 


C 















object descriptions. The edges and 
lines are the same for both the A- 
closer and G-closer cubes, but many 
other visual features are seen dif- 
ferently in the two views. A few of 
these are given in figure 2. Remark- 
ably, our visual system simultaneously 
flips all these perceptual decisions 
from one mutually consistent reading 
of the cube to the other. This il- 
lustrates the key cooperative property 
of massively parallel computation and 
why it is conceptually different from 
von Neumann computation on stan- 
dard machines. 

The Necker cube also illustrates 
some of the details of the connec- 
tionist paradigm, as shown in figure 
2. In our models each item of interest 
is represented as a computational 
unit, with connections to many other 
units. Each unit has a level of activity 
(say between -10 and +10) and 
automatically sends the value of this 
activity along all its outgoing connec- 
tions. In the network of figure 2, units 
that are mutually consistent (for ex- 
ample, "H closer than G" and l, G hid- 
den") have connections to each other. 
Units that are mutually exclusive, such 
as "G hidden" and "G showing" are 
connected with circle-tipped links 
denoting negative connections. The 
only other information needed for a 
complete model is the rule by which 
a unit computes its new activity from 
its inputs and its old activity. We can 
assume that the units compute the 
average of their positive and negative 
inputs. Networks like figure 2 are not 



very sensitive to the exact choice of 
unit computation rules; this is one of 
the reasons for their attractiveness. 
Units that are all mutually connected 
by negative links are said to comprise 
a "winner-take-all" network. Such net- 
works are one of the main decision 
mechanisms in connectionist models 
and have known neurophysiological 
analogs. 

Much of the effort in massively 
parallel AI is dedicated to using com- 
putational frameworks like that in 
figure 2 to build models of intelligent 
activity. Advantages of this approach 
include its link to natural intelligence, 
increased noise resistance, and ease 
of implementation on parallel hard- 
ware. But the main advantage of the 
connectionist approach is that it pro- 
vides a much better way of specify- 
ing some computations. I know of no 
other way to describe the Necker- 
cube phenomenon that is as clear and 
concise as the model in figure 2. 

A Natural-Language 
Application 

Researchers in AI and related areas 
of cognitive science are using connec- 
tionist models to study a variety of 
tasks. Vision is an area where massive 
parallelism fits naturally. Ballard and 
Brown's article describes some of the 
success in that area. The methodolo- 
gy is also effective in natural-language 
research. Although it is a less obvious 
application, researchers have had 
some very nice results in that domain. 

[continued) 



\ \ 




/ \ / * 1 


1 / \ / / 


\ yS^ 




— "N J^ -^k \ I 




\ f 




A A f H V \ / J 

:r than ) { CLOSER than Jo ./ d 

b y v g y y N 


^ G ^\ f c ^N / 


\ f CLOSE 


CLOSER THAN ) — ( CLOSER THAN ) / 






v H J \. D J \ 


\ \^ 




_--< ^^ _^ ~-^ A 




I 




\ / \ 




\ -• 




*^v ^^""^"""^ / \ 




1 f 

\ (IS 


A 


CONVEX ) f G HIDDEN p- 1 \-a 


f G SHOWING ) f IS A CONVEX J 1 


\ V 




y y v vO \ 


\. ^/ \^ Y ^/ 1 


t 




— -*r V- ^ / \ 




1 

\ 




A~sT / \ 




1 

\ 




( A-CLOSER Y / 


I c/g-closfr^ / 


V CUBE J~ 1 


\ ~V CUBE J \ 


I 




^ -^ t 


\ ^ — -^ 1 


I 




! 


\ 1 



Figure I: The optically illusive Necker 
cube. Is point A closer to uou than point 
G, or vice versa? 



Figure 2: A connectionist model illustrating the process of understanding the 
cube in figure 1. 



278 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



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CONNECTIONS 



charity" will activate the "dance" 
meaning of ball. This will weaken the 
"sphere" meaning, which will in turn 
reduce the activity of "propel" 
because the sentence no longer has 
a suitable object. Thus, an alternative 
stable coalition develops and sup- 
presses the original interpretation. 
The two alternative coalitions are 
quite similar to the two readings of 
the Necker cube. This is no accident— 
the idea of a cooperative-competitive 
network pervades parallel models. 
Work on language problems such as 
disambiguation is quite advanced and 
offers simple explanations of many 
phenomena. For example, a context 
that biased us toward the "dance" 
sense of ball would be modeled as 
providing that meaning with a head 
start in its competition with "sphere." 
Again, the massively parallel 
paradigm is the simplest way to ex- 
press this idea. 

Knowledge Representation 

The Necker-cube and disambiguation 
examples are both instances of what 
AI researchers call recognition prob- 
lems. Several other problems are like 
this, but many are not. Can we apply 
massively parallel models to other 
traditional AI issues such as knowl- 



edge representation and inference? 
Researchers have completed much 
less work along these lines but have 
made some promising starts. The ex- 
ample in figure 4 should convey the 
flavor of this work. 

The standard way to explore the 
issue of knowledge representation 
and inference is in terms of programs 
that can answer questions. AI ap- 
proaches to the development of 
question-answering systems are 
numerous (Roger Schank and Larry 
Hunter present one in "The Quest to 
Understand Thinking" on page 143), 
but the approaches all have the same 
basic requirements: You need a way 
to store the knowledge, to pose ques- 
tions, and to compute and register the 
answers. In a connectionist model, all 
of these aspects must be expressed 
in terms of activity spreading among 
simple units like those in the previous 
examples. 

It is easiest to start with the record- 
ing of answers. In figure 4, the possi- 
ble tastes of foods form a winner-take- 
all network, where each unit inhibits 
the others so only one answer will be 
active. The answer network is as- 
sumed to be part of a routine that 
also poses the questions and acts 
upon the answer. The units that make 





food 






> 


/ 


> \ 


\ 






ham 




yam 


















salty 


~~/t\ y\ * 




sweet 




























meat 




Vf 


jyyie 





Routine 



(orderN 
\winey- 



Winner-Take-AII 
Answer Network 



Figure 4: interaction between a knowledge network and a routine, 



up the routine are assumed to be ac- 
tivated in sequence from left to right 
just like a standard program. The 
routine sends a question to the knowl- 
edge network by activating the ap- 
propriate units; figure 4 shows this as 
links, for example, from the hexagonal 
node to the nodes for "has-taste" and 
"ham" The key to the operation of 
this network is the operation of the 
triangular-shaped nodes, such as "bl." 
We define such a triangular unit to 
become active when two of its inputs 
are simultaneously active. In this case 
"ham" and "has-taste" are both on, so 
"bl" becomes active and activates 
"salty." Now the "salty" node in the 
knowledge network spreads activa- 
tion to the response "r-salty" back in 
the routine and the question is 
answered. The same network can 
answer questions such as "Name a 
salty meat" when activated appro- 
priately. The answers returned by such 
a network will depend on context, just 
as people's answers do; contextual 
bias is again modeled by activation. 

The examples of cube perception, 
word disambiguation, and question 
answering are typical of the current 
applications of massively parallel 
computational models in AI. The ex- 
amples are condensed and they omit 
many important considerations, but 
they are representative of the current 
level of attainment. In no case are the 
connectionist programs as sophisti- 
cated as conventional AI systems for 
similar tasks. The general notion of 
massively parallel models in AI is 
quite new, and we do not yet under- 
stand where its ultimate strengths and 
weaknesses will lie. We do know that 
the development of highly parallel 
computers will have a marked effect 
on the practicality of connectionist ap- 
proaches to AI. 

Even if we had discovered parallel 
algorithms for vision and language 
tasks and could run them efficiently 
on parallel hardware, we would be 
missing a crucial element of intelli- 
gence—learning. No system that can- 
not incorporate new knowledge and 
change its behavior could be called 
intelligent. This is an important issue 

{continued) 



282 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



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cursor control keys. 

■ Three-inch compact floppy disk drive 
with 150 K-bytes memory capacity per 
side. 

■ Optional RS-232C serial interface 
and Centronics-type parallel interface 
available. 

■ Wire dot impact printer that gives a 

©1985 Canon U.S.A., Inc. 

+ MS-D0S is a trademark of MICRO SOFT. 



sharp 5X7 dot matrix and has a 
maximum 30 characters per line. It 
prints a black or red original on plain paper 
plus two copies. 

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So if you're dealing with business, 
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Or write Canon U.S.A., Inc. 

Systems Division/TX-Series 

P.O. Box CN 11250, Trenton, NJ. 08650 

Canon Systems Division 

Inquiry 58 



CONNECTIONS 



for all of AI but is especially critical 
for connectionist models. If we model 
our system as a set of rules, we'll have 
no conceptual difficulty in adding 
more rules, although the question of 
which rules to add remains unsolved. 
For connectionist models, the intelli- 
gence is in the connections— but we 
know that the brain grows essentially 
no new connections. How could such 
a system, even in principle, incor- 
porate new knowledge? 

The neural substrate of memory 
and learning is one of the great un- 
solved scientific questions for which 
we certainly have no definitive an- 
swers. But connectionist theories of 
learning are compatible with current 
brain research and are computational- 
ly feasible. The key idea is that while 
new connections are rare, weight change 
in connections appears to be com- 
mon. We also know that each unit can 
have thousands of incoming and out- 



going connections. Our hypothesis is 
that most of these connections are 
only potentially important and that 
learning involves strengthening the 
appropriate connections. Suppose, 
for example, the network of figure 4 
needed to learn that spinach was a 
salty vegetable. Our model suggests 
that there are uncommitted triangular 
nodes that are weakly connected to 
many combinations of objects, prop- 
erties, and values. In an ideal case, 
one of them will be linked to 
"'spinach," "has-taste," and 'salty," 
among other things. This unit will 
become highly activated by the simul- 
taneous activation of three of its 
neighbors and, by strengthening its 
active connections, can become ded- 
icated to the new association. This ex- 
ample omits many important issues; 
the whole learning theory is in a very 
primitive stage. Geoffrey Hinton, in 
the article "Learning in Parallel Net- 



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works" (page 265), describes a related 
but different learning scheme based 
on the assumption that concepts are 
represented diffusely as the activity 
of many many units. All of the con- 
nectionist AI efforts badly need more 
theoretical and experimental work, 
which leads us to an active interest in 
parallel computers. 

Parallel Computers 

Clearly massively parallel AI models 
have a natural fit to parallel com- 
puters. The speed of our current 
simulations on sequential machines is 
slow enough to be a major bottle- 
neck. While some kinds of programs 
are hard to transfer to parallel com- 
puters, connectionist simulations are 
straightforward to move. If we have 
100 processors and a network of 
20,000 units to simulate, we just 
assign 200 units to each processor. 
There are technical questions about 
the best way to partition the network, 
but the basic idea is simple. It is less 
clear how to monitor and modify the 
behavior of such systems, and this 
leads to basic research questions in 
parallel computation. A number of 
machines with hundreds of proces- 
sors are being built in various labs. 
Our group at the University of Roch- 
ester is working with the Butterfly 
multiprocessor of Bolt Beranek and 
Newman; we expect to have a 128- 
processor system running this sum- 
mer. A parallel version of our connec- 
tionist simulator is one of the major 
driving applications for the Butterfly. 
Possibly the best way to program 
many problems for a multiprocessor 
is to express them as a massively 
parallel network. While breaking a 
problem into 2 56 equal pieces is dif- 
ficult, it may be fairly easy to express 
the problem's natural parallelism and 
let a compiler map the result onto 
whatever hardware is available. This 
seems to be the experience of the Cal 
Tech group on the physics problems 
they have attacked, and it appears to 
be true for many AI problems. The 
success of this approach could be a 
coincidence but it might be related 
to the fact that intelligence evolved on 
massively parallel hardware. ■ 



284 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 195 for Dealers. Inquiry 196 for End Users. 



The new Canon 
Handy Terminal makes 
any computer system 
go farther. 



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Handy Terminal 5000 is | 
the portable unit that lets 
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With a maximum 32K internal 
user RAM file memory, it's perfect 
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business applications. 

It can be programmed to perform 
almost any task, adopting BASIC and 
Assembler languages. 

And can even relay information to 
your computer via phone hookup. 

Portability is also the key word of 
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At a weight of less than 2 lbs., it can 
operate on a rechargeable battery and 
can be carried by neck strap or in an 
attache case. Yet it's highly durable, 
water resistant and shock resistant. 
Which means it can take its fair share 
of hard knocks. 

©1985 Canon U.S.A., Inc. 



: < .. .. 




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printer that can print one original and 
a copy. 

And both terminals can incorporate 
an optional bar code reader. 

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Canon Systems Division 

Inquiry 59 




Photo I: A scanning electron micrograph of brain ceils grown in tissue culture on a Motorola 68000. The center clump of balls is a 

group of somas, and the thin lines radiating outward from the clump are the neural processes. 

The 1C traces are 2 to 5 microns across, and the traces on the nerve processes taper to less than 0.2 micron across. 



286 BYTE* APRIL 198^ 



MICROGRAPH TAKEN BY IUDY TROGADIS. FOR MORE DETAILS SEE PAGE 299 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



REVERSE 

ENGINEERING 

THE BRAIN 



by John K. Stevens 



Chipping away at the brain 



COULD WE DEVELOP more efficient 
"sixth-generation" artificial-intelli- 
gence (AI) computers using circuitry 
copied directly from the brain, per- 
haps using radical new architecture 
new hardware, and an entirely new 
logic? This question seems to have 
been raised about once a year for the 
last two decades. The answer con- 
tinues to be 'Probably not right away," 
but as our understanding of principles 
used in neural processing evolves, it 
is a possibility that must be taken 
seriously. Moreover, some new digital 
designs such as the Boltzmann 
machines (see "Learning in Parallel 
Networks" by Geoffrey E. Hinton on 
page 265) closely parallel the overall 
architecture of the brain. 

First we will review what might be 
called the device physics of the brain, 
focusing on the physical and electrical 
principles that optical nerve cells use 
to process information. Then we will 
discuss how silicon-based designs 
might be adapted to make use of the 
brain's approach and how such 
designs might be used in some high- 
speed processing applications. 

While today's digital hardware is ex- 



tremely impressive, it is clear that the 
human retina's real-time performance 
goes unchallenged (table 1). Actually 
to simulate 10 milliseconds (ms) of the 
complete processing of even a single 
nerve cell from the retina would re- 
quire the solution of about 500 
simultaneous nonlinear differential 
equations 100 times and would take 
at least several minutes of processing 
time on a Cray supercomputer. Keep- 
ing in mind that there are 10 million 
or more such cells interacting with 
each other in complex ways, it would 
take a minimum of 100 years of Cray 
time to simulate what takes place in 
your eye many times every second. 
How does this impressive piece of 
"bio-ware" work? 

A Brief Introduction 
to Nerve Cells 

The retina's nerve cells function as 
complex analog processors. The con- 
nections between these cells, the 
characteristics of their connections, 
and the shape of the cells themselves 
all seem to play a major role in deter- 
mining the basic parameters of the 
analog processing "program." 



Nerve cells come in many different 
shapes and sizes, but they can be 
placed into two broad categories- 
local processing "interneuron"cells 
and output cells. The local processing 
cells have all of their inputs and out- 
puts limited to a very small region 
(usually a few hundred microns), while 
the output cells communicate from 
one part of the brain to another, from 
the brain to muscle, or from sensory 
organs to the brain. 

The nerve cell, or neuron, can be 
thought of as a stand-alone analog- 
logical processing unit. Each cell has 
an inside and an outside separated by 
a plasma membrane. The inside of the 
cell and the fluid surrounding the cell 
have different concentrations of 

[continued] 

}ohn K. Stevens, Ph.D., is an associate pro- 
fessor of physiology and biomedical engineer- 
ing at the Playfair Neuroscience Unit (Univer- 
sity of Toronto, Tbronto Western Hospital, 399 
Bathurst St.. Toronto, Ontario M5T 2S8, 
Canada). He is also cofounder of a company 
called Telepanel, which develops hardware and 
software for the retail sales industry, and is 
a member of the Canadian Institute of Ad- 
vanced Research. 

APRIL 1985 'BYTE 287 



THE BRAIN 




SYNAPTIC OUTPUT 



AXON 



DENDRITE 



£— J 



SOMA 



SYNAPTIC INPUT- 



Figure 1: A summary overview of a 
typical nerve cell. 



charged ions, which creates a poten- 
tial difference across the membrane. 
The concentration of the inside ions 
is controlled by many "ion pumps" 
located in the membrane itself. The 
ion concentration of the fluid sur- 
rounding the cell is just filtered blood 
and is regulated by special ion pumps 
found in the kidneys. These differen- 
tial ion concentrations provide the 
electrical energy for all nerve cells and 
are exactly analogous to a battery. 
The full circuit requires a resistor in 
series with the battery to represent 
the ion leakage across the plasma 
membrane. The active pumps in the 



Table I: A comparison 


of specifications for a 


hypothetical image-processing 


system using state-of-the- 


art integrated circuitry and the human retina. 


Specification 


Typical IC Product 


Retina 


circuit layout 


two-dimensional 


three-dimensional 


IC line width 


1-3 microns 


0.1-1.0 micron 


number of gates 


approx, 1,000,000 


approx. 25,000,000,000 


resolution (pixels) 


2048 x 2048 


10,000 x 10,000 


PC board trace width 


250 microns 


0.2-3.0 microns 


power consumption 


200-300 watts 


0.001 watts 


system volume 


approx. 10,000 cu.ir 


approx. .0003 cu.in. 


total weight 


20,000-50,000 g 


<1 g. 




Photo 2: An electron micrograph of a cross-section of retina about 0.1 micron thick 
and about 200 microns by 500 microns across. The light would activate the receptors 
(located at the bottom of the picture), and the final output would come from the top at 
the ganglion cells. The large round objects are somas, or cell bodies, and the very small 
profiles layered between the cells are nerve processes that make synaptic contacts with 
each other. Sequential series of the micrographs are used to reconstruct cells similar to 
those seen in figure 7. 



cell's membrane and kidneys are 
analogous to a battery charger, but in- 
stead of using a 110-volt wall plug, 
they use glucose or other nutrients as 
the power source. 

The Soma 

Each cell has a large round central 
body called a soma (photos 1 and 2, 
figure 1) that contains the genetic and 
metabolic machinery necessary to 
keep the cell alive. The soma takes the 
glucose found in the surrounding fluid 
and converts it to a more usable form 
of energy called ATP (adenosine 
triphosphate). The ATP drives the ac- 
tive pumps directly. The soma also 
synthesizes lipids and proteins that 
are used to maintain the cell's mem- 
brane, synapses, gates, and the nerve- 
process skeleton (cytoskeleton). 

The Passive Dendrite 

Attached to the soma are long, irreg- 
ularly shaped nerve processes (hair- 
like projections) called dendrites. These 
dendrites often have diameters under 
1 micron and extremely complex 
branching shapes. Dendrites are elec- 
trically passive and can be repre- 
sented as a series of capacitors and 
resistors. Their primary function is to 
receive inputs from other cells via 
specialized contacts called synapses or 
to connect other dendrites to synap- 
tic outputs. One very important point 
that we will discuss in some detail is 
that the shape of a dendrite can have 
a dramatic effect upon the time 
course and final potential of any 
synaptic input. Thus, the same synap- 
tic input on two differently shaped 
dendrites can have dramatically dif- 
ferent effects. Synaptic inputs on a 
dendrite can either be summed and 
passively conducted to local synaptic 
outputs located on the same dendrite 
(in interneurons) or passively con- 
ducted back to the soma, where an 
action potential may be initiated in 
output cells. 

The Active Axon 

A second type of nerve process also 
attached to the soma is called an axon. 
The axon differs from the dendrite in 
that it is electrically active and can 



288 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



THE BRAIN 



serve as the final output channel of 
the cell. Axons are always found on 
the output cells but often do not ap- 
pear on interneurons, particularly on 
interneurons that have both inputs 
and outputs on dendrites. The axon 
is a nonlinear threshold device that 
produces a rapid, all-or-none voltage 
increase and decrease of about 1-ms 
duration. This voltage pulse, which is 
called an action potential, has a fixed 
amplitude and occurs when the 
resting potential within the soma rises 
above a critical threshold. The rapid 
changes in potential associated with 
the action potential are due to 
specialized proteins contained in the 
axon's membrane that selectively 
allow sodium and potassium ions to 
flow across the membrane, down their 
concentration gradients. You might 
think of these action potential gates 
as simply a series of interconnected 
one-shots. 

Anatomically the gates begin on 
the soma just before the actual axon 
leaves the cell. When the synaptic in- 
puts located on the dendrite of a cell 
are activated, the potential may be 
passively conducted to the soma near 
the axon. If the sum total of all of 
these inputs as seen by the soma or 
axon is above the threshold of these 
gates, they will be activated and pro- 
duce an action potential. Once this 
first group of gates has been ac- 
tivated, they change the internal ax- 
onal potential even more and activate 
the next set of gates located farther 
down the axon. These more distant 



gates raise the axonal potential again 
and activate even more distant gates, 
and so on, for the entire length of the 
axon, up to many feet in total length. 

Synaptic Inputs 
and Outputs 

Axons terminate in specialized con- 
tacts, called synapses, on other nerve 
cells. Synapses make contact with the 
dendrites of other cells and are 
capable of changing a dendrite's local 
potential in a positive or negative 
direction. When the potential on the 
axonal side (the presynaptic side) is 
raised, special compounds called 
neurotransmitters are released. Their 
release seems to be graded as a func- 
tion of the presynaptic voltage wave- 
form. Neurotransmitters are capable 
of opening gates similar to those 
described above for the action poten- 
tial, except that these gates are 
located on the dendritic membrane 
and are activated chemically. When a 
synaptic gate is open, it selectively 
allows charged ions to flow across the 
membrane, either into or out of the 
cell. This in turn changes the internal 
dendritic potential. The total number 
of gates opened depends upon the 
total number of transmitter molecules 
released. A given synapse may excite 
or inhibit a cell. A single cell will 
always have many synaptic inputs on 
its dendrites and may have many 
synaptic outputs on its axons or den- 
drites to many different cells. 

The output synapses from output 
cells are always located on the end of 



an axon. However, the output 
synapses from interneurons are 
located on the passive dendrites near 
the input synapses. Since the action 
potential has a fixed waveform, the 
synaptic outputs from the axon of an 
output cell will also have a fixed 
waveform. In contrast, since the 
potentials inside a dendrite are 
graded analog signals (due to analog 
summation of many different synap- 
tic inputs), the intemeuron synaptic 
outputs may also be graded. Thus, 
output cells have graded analog in- 
puts with digital, all-or-none final out- 
puts; interneurons have graded 
analog inputs but also have graded 
analog outputs. 

The Methods 

Advanced recording methods that de- 
pend upon submicron electrodes 
placed near individual cells in living 
brains and in tissue culture have 
taught us a great deal about the func- 
tion or what could be called the soft- 
ware and hardware of brain cells. 
These electrodes make it possible to 
record action potentials and in many 
cases penetrate the soma and record 
intracellular potentials from synapses 
that have been activated on a 
peripheral dendrite. It has also been 
possible through other methods to 
measure the physical characteristics 
and properties of nerve cells, in- 
dividual portions of cells, and even 
the properties of membranes and 
proteins embedded in the mem- 

[continued) 




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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 289 



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THE BRAIN 



branes. Until recently, it has been dif- 
ficult to incorporate these physical 
parameters into a comprehensive 
model of submicron device physics, 
or what we call the design rules of the 
brain. 

As 1 mentioned, the shape of nerve- 
cell processes plays an important role 
in controlling their function. Unfor- 
tunately, these processes are almost 
always well below 1 micron in dia- 
meter. A major difficulty has been 
that to accurately create an electrical 
or physical model of a nerve cell re- 
quires a detailed knowledge of sur- 
face area, length, and branching pat- 
terns of all processes and location of 
synaptic inputs. Because the cells are 
small and have extremely complex 
three-dimensional geometries, these 
parameters cannot be accurately ob- 
tained using the light microscope, 
which has a resolution of only about 
1 micron. The scanning electron 
microscope allows us to see cells at 
higher resolution, but the cells must 



be removed from their circuit in the 
brain and placed on a special flat 
substrate or grown in tissue culture 
directly on the substrate. 

Thus, scanning microscopes cannot 
be used to analyze intact three- 
dimensional circuits of the brain. The 
transmission electron microscope has 
more than adequate resolution. But 
to see the cells at high resolution, they 
must be sliced into very thin sections, 
usually less than O.l micron (photo 2). 
Thus, while the submicron structure 
can be resolved, the three- 
dimensional structure of the cells is 
lost. 

The solution has been to simply 
slice the brain into thin serial sections 
and then, by using special computer 
systems, to reassemble the individual 
cross-sections into a full three- 
dimensional reconstruction of the 
original object (figure 2). Technologi- 
cal advances over the last few years 
have made this almost routine, so it 

[continued] 



'^ClflMC W.Rl/E AXON CUNnYEL [HATED) 



s ^,^ : % 



organol Is 
s~ microtubule 




Figure 2: Electron microscopic reconstruction of an axon. The internal structure of a 
dendrite would be similar. The long tubes [microtubules) and round green objects 
{organelles) play a role in controlling the local geometry of the nerve process. This 
process, reconstructed by M. Greenberg [Play fair), has a diameter of about 1 micron. 
Reprinted by permission of Academic Press from Advances in Cellular Neuro- 
biology [see Bibliography). 



290 BYTE- APRIL 1985 



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THE BRAIN 



is now possible to study the structures 
inside the cells that control shape and 
thus control the device physics of the 
cells. 

Creating Equivalent 
Circuits 

Each of the various nerve-cell com- 
ponents described above has an elec- 
trical circuit equivalent. If you com- 
bine this electrical equivalent with the 
submicron three-dimensional geom- 
etry of the cell, it is possible to create 
reasonably accurate models of nerve- 
cell processing. In what follows I will 
illustrate the principles used by nerve 
cells for processing signals by describ- 
ing the electrical equivalents for a 
dendrite the power supply and the 
synaptic contact. I will also show how 
the shape of a cell's processes can 
alter inputs and outputs and how the 
cell's internal skeleton can alter pro- 
cess shape. It is also possible to 
create an equivalent circuit for the ax- 
on, but for the sake of simplicity I will 
limit myself to the passive portions of 
the nerve cell and will not discuss the 
electrical properties of the axon. 

The Form and Electrical 
Circuits of the Passive 
Dendrite 

Brain-cell dendrites have a skeleton 
that controls the shape and, to some 
extent, the branching patterns of the 
process. As I will discuss below, this 
skeleton is particularly important in 
controlling how a brain cell processes 
information. The dendrite has an 
outer skin, or membrane, that consists 
of a very thin layer of oil-like sub- 
stances called phospholipids. Phospho- 
lipids have high specific resistivity and 
capacitance and can be thought of as 
insulators. The inside of the nerve-cell 
process is filled with a highly conduc- 
tive gel, or awplasm, that for our pur- 
poses can be thought of as a conduct- 
ing wire. Thus, a nerve-cell dendrite in 
the most simple electrical terms is a 
conducting wire, the axoplasm, with 
an outer insulating layer, the mem- 
brane. The nerve process can be rep- 
resented with simple electrical equiv- 
alents consisting of a ladder network 
of passive resistors and capacitors. 




.10 MICRON 



1.0 MICRONS 



SECTION FROM DENDRITIC PROCESS 



— wv- 



1 



ELECTRICAL EQUIVALENT 

r, = LENGTH *(R, /AREA) 
r m = R m /S. AREA 
Cm = C m * S. AREA 
R, s 75^-cm 
Rm= 2,000^-cm 2 
C m = 1 ^tF/cm2 



Figure 3: Electrical equivalent of a 
dendritic circuit. The dendrite segment is 
about 0.1 micron in diameter. S.area= 
surface area of the cylinder and area= 
cross-sectional area. 




-87 mV 

RESTING 

POTENTIAL 




I I I 



POWER 
SUPPLY 



L__< 



90 mV 
- -87 mV CI" 
40 mV Na + 



Figure 4: Electrical equivalent of the 
power supply of a nerve cell. The 
differences in voltages between this figure 
and the text reflect normal ranges of cell 
potentials. 



A simple model of a portion of a 
dendrite is shown in figure 3. Below 
the model is the equivalent ladder 
network of resistors and capacitors 
that represent that model. The 
resistor labeled r m is the resistor used 



to represent leakage out of the mem- 
brane, while the resistor labeled R ( is 
the resistance offered by the internal 
gel or cytoplasm. Finally c m is the 
capacitive component of the mem- 
brane. These values are calculated 
from specific resistivities that have 
been experimentally measured for 
different cell types and by measuring 
the detailed geometry of the cell 
itself. The computation is virtually 
identical to that now used by IC (inte- 
grated-circuit) designers in calculating 
resistances and capacitances on a 
chip. IC designers know the specific 
resistivity of polysilicon, silicon, and 
metal layers. When given the geo- 
metry of a pad, they can compute its 
total resistance and capacitance. 

The specific capacitance of the 
phospholipids that make up the den- 
drite's membrane is about 1 micro- 
farad per square centimeter. Thus, we 
measure the surface area of one small 
region of the process and multiply it 
by the specific membrane capacity. 
The dendritic portion in figure 3 
would have a total capacitance of 1.57 
x 10" 9 microfarad, a membrane 
resistance of 1.27 x 10 12 ohms, and 
an axial resistance of 9.55 x 10 4 
ohms. 

The Nerve-Cell 
Power-Supply Circuit 

The power supply for a cell can be 
represented as a series of batteries in 
series with a resistor (figure 4). Each 
battery represents the differential 
concentration across the cell's mem- 
brane of a specific ion. The voltage of 
the battery for a specific ion is deter- 
mined directly by its Nernst 
equilibrium constant, which is given 
as 

millivoltage = 61 x Log(|OUT|/|IN|) 

The concentration of the positively 
charged ion Na + is much higher out- 
side the cell than it is inside the cell 
by a ratio of about 10:1. Its Nernst 
equilibrium potential is therefore +61 
millivolts (mV). Other ions typically 
found around cells in warm-blooded 
animals are K + , with a Nernst 
equilibrium potential of about -90 

[continued) 



292 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 293 



THE BRAIN 



mV (minus because the concentration 
of K + is greater on the inside of the 
cell), and CI", with a potential of -87 
mV. The series resistors shown in 
figure 4 represent leakage of these 
ions across the membrane to charge 
the capacitor to its final value. Using 
special recording methods, it is possi- 
ble to determine the value of each 
leakage resistor. Once that is known, 
we can quickly compute that the 
potential difference across the mem- 
brane will be about -87 mV. 

Since this "resting potential" is 
relatively constant throughout the 
cell, it is usually not explicitly included 
in the models or computations. How- 
ever the principle of using ionic gra- 
dients and membrane resistance to 
create potential differences is impor- 
tant and will be used below in the 
description of synapses. 

The Synapse or Neural 
Gate Circuit 

You might think of synaptic inputs as 
voltage-controlled changes in the 
membrane resistor connected to an 
ionic battery. In some cases the bat- 
tery may be positive and thus pro- 
duce a net excitatory change inside 
the dendrites, and in other cases the 
battery may be negative and thus pro- 
duce net inhibition inside the cell. 
Figure 5 illustrates a schematic 
synapse making contact with a den- 
drite. When the voltage inside the 




SYNAPTIC 
GATES 



+ 100 mV 

SYNAPTIC 

POTENTIAL- 



X 



synapse increases, neurotransmitters 
are released. These neurotransmitters 
selectively (depending upon their 
chemical composition) alter the 
permeability of one or more ions. In 
effect, these neurotransmitters 
change the value of the resistor con- 
nected to an ionic battery that in turn 
leads to a change in the resting poten- 
tial of the cell. A typical gate might 
have 5.0 x 10 12 ohms resting value 
and 5.0 x 10 8 ohms during activation. 
One important point is that a 
synapse cannot be modeled as a 
simple voltage input to the dendrite, 
nor can it be safely represented as a 
simple injection of current. Rather, it 
is a complex conductance change 
within a complex passive RC (resis- 
tance-capacitance) network. The final 
time course and potential seen across 
the cell's membrane will therefore not 
be just a function of the synaptic bat- 
tery and resistor but also of the mem- 
brane resistor (rj, axial resistor (r ( ), 
and membrane capacitor (c m ). Since 
these components are controlled to 
some extent by the shape of the cell, 
the geometry of the cell can be used 
to control synaptic strength. This prin- 
ciple is illustrated below. 

The Retinal Amacrine Cell 
Electrical Circuit 

Figure 7 illustrates a retinal amacrine 
cell, reconstructed by the computer 
from serial electron micrographs. The 



amacrine cell is of particular interest 
because it has a complex geometry 
that includes highly irregular and 
varicose dendrites that attach to the 
soma. It is a classic interneuron with 
many synaptic inputs and outputs 
over the entire cell's surface, and no 
axon. 

Once the surface area and volumes 
have been computed, the cell is 
reduced to a simple geometric sche- 
matic that approximates the original 
shape using cylinders similar to those 
shown in figure 7. You can then easily 
reduce this schematic to an equiva- 
lent circuit by using a membrane 
resistor, axial resistor, and membrane 
capacitor to create a large RC ladder 
network similar to that seen in figure 
6. This network can be simulated 
using conventional linear circuit 
analysis (see October 1978 BYTE) on 
almost any small computer. 

I have simulated the cell shown in 
figure 7 using two identical synapses 
placed on different parts of the cell 
(A and B in figure 8). I have not in- 
cluded the batteries and resting 
potential resistors since they would all 
be equal in this circuit. The synaptic 
inputs consist of a resistor and a 
100-mV battery as shown in figure 5. 
A synaptic input is modeled as a rapid 
decrease in the value of the synaptic 
resistor for 50 ms and then a return 
to a very high resting value. The lower 

{continued) 




DENDRITE 



X 



TIT IT IT IT IT IT V 



LUMPED CIRCUIT 



Figure 5: Electrical equivalent of a Figure 6: The circuits shown in other figures may be cascaded to create whole cell 

synaptic gate. We use an arbitrary battery models, 
of 100 mV in our models of nerve cells. 



294 BYTE- APRIL 1985 







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THE BRAIN 




Figure 7: A computer-reconstructed nerve 
cell from serial electron micrographs 
similar to those seen in photo 2. The 
soma diameter is about 10 microns. This 
amacrine cell from a retinal circuit was 
reconstructed by R. Jacobs, Play fair, using 
micrographs collected by B. McGwire 

part of figure 8 shows the maximum 
peak of this response inside the cell 
on the graph. Each line represents the 
peak voltage along the dark portion 
of the cell during activation of the 
synapse. 

Since this cell is an interneuron, it 
does not have an axon (amacrine 
means "without axon"), nor does it 
have an action potential. It does, how- 
ever, have many synaptic outputs to 
other adjacent cells, two of which are 
illustrated by large arrows pointing up 
in figure 8. Keep in mind that the A 
and B synaptic inputs are identical. Yet 
the effects they have on the intra- 
cellular voltage for the outputs near 
A and B are dramatically different. 
The B input has a much greater effect 
on the A output, as compared to the 
effect of the A input on the B output. 
Thus, while the B synapse can activate 
both the A and B outputs, the A 
synapse can activate only the A 
output. 

This simple function was created 
and controlled by geometry of the 



100.0 
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5.12 10.24 15.36 20.48 25.60 30.72 35.84 40.96 46.08 51.20 

MICRONS 



Figure 8: Electrical model of the cell shown in figure 7. Some of the software used to 
compute these plots was developed by Dr. S. Ellias. Massachusetts General Hospital, 
Harvard Medical School. 



nerve cell itself. One can imagine 
other effects when both synapses are 
simultaneously activated or when 
other synaptic inputs are activated far- 
ther out on the dendrite. Thus, the 
specific analog-logical functions of a 
nerve cell can be controlled by the 
cell's geometry. This manipulation of 
cell form can be thought of as the 
device physics the brain uses to con- 
trol logical functions. 

Can We Adapt the Device 

Physics of the Brain 

to Silicon-Based Circuits? 

The tantalizing question raised by 
these observations is "Can we adapt 
this simple principle of changing 
three-dimensional geometry to sili- 
con-based circuits that could simulate 
brain circuits?" The answer is "Yes, 
quite easily." lack Kilby of Texas In- 
struments, whose important insight 
led to the first IC 2 5 years ago, made 
us realize that it was possible to con- 
trol many important silicon-based 
passive parameters such as the value 



of pull-up or pull-down resistors by 
changing the size and shape of the 
etched area. While the constants for 
resistances and capacitances are 
several orders of magnitude different 
from brain constants, it is interesting 
that the circuits in figures 3 and 6 are 
exact equivalents of those used to 
simulate an interconnection within a 
silicon chip. The equations and soft- 
ware used to simulate the nerve cell 
above are almost identical to the soft- 
ware used to simulate a full IC during 
design. 

Projects to create these silicon- 
based neurons, called silicrons, are just 
now getting under way Conceptual- 
ly, the shape of the cell is simply 
etched into silicon in place of the con- 
ventional linear interconnections. 
Gates are placed at locations where 
synaptic inputs and outputs might be 
located, and for output silicrons we 
can simulate an axon with a simple 
Schmitt trigger circuit or one-shot. 

Unfortunately silicrons will be only 

{continued) 



296 B YTE • APRIL 1985 




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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 297 



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Inquiry 233 



THE BRAIN 



a laboratory curiosity until one final 
problem has been resolved— how do 
we create new and arbitrary pro- 
grams? There is no simple way to 
change or modify the strength of con- 
nections from one silicron to another. 
Since researchers do not really have 
a clear understanding of how the 
brain modifies its own circuits (the 
device physics of learning), any 
silicon-based solutions will be non- 
biological. Ongoing biological work is 
encouraging and suggests that in 
some cells active shape change of 
dendrites may lead to changes in 
synaptic strength. Nevertheless, it is 
safe to say that it will be some time 
before we will have a full understand- 
ing of perhaps the most impressive 
feature of neural circuits: their ability 
to program themselves. In the mean- 
time, it will certainly be possible to 
create very fast neuronlike devices 
with well-defined, prewired functions 
such as CCD (charge-coupled device) 
image processing. However, it will be 
quite some time before we can create 
what could legitimately be called a 
sixth-generation computer based on 
a neurological model. ■ 



The micrograph of brain cells grown in 
tissue culture by }udy Trogadis (see page 
286) is available as a museum-quality 
poster for $7 (U.S.) plus $3 for postage 
and handling. Phone (713) 664-7457 or 
526-9617 or write Synaptic Poster, 8 
Alexander St., Brampton, Ontario L6V 
1H6, Canada (VISA and MasterCard 
accepted). All proceeds from the sale of 
the poster will support the research 
described in this article. Copyright 1983, 
1985, ). Trogadis and I. Stevens. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1. Kuffler, S. W., and John Nicholls. From 
Neuron to Brain. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer 
Associates Inc., 1976. 

2. Mead, C, and L. Conway. Introduction to 
VLSI Systems. Reading, MA: Add i son- 
Wesley 1980. 

3. Stevens, J., and J. TYogadis. "Computer- 
Assisted Reconstruction from Serial Elec- 
tron Micrographs," in Advances in Cellular 
Neurobiology, Vol. 5, pages 341-369, Ed. S. 
Fedoroff. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 
1980. 



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ITEM NO. 


QUAIL 


ITEM 


PRICE EA, 


SHIPPING 


TOTAL 


825 




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$29.95 






808 




Adj. BACK CHAIR 


$49.95 







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Inquiry 4I9 



APRIL I985 -BYTE 299 



IT ALL ADDS UP... 



IBM SYSTEMS 

Starting as low as 

$1599 

256K, 1-DS/DD DRIVE 
KEYBOARD 



MULTIFUNCTION 
CARDS 

IDEA 

IDEAmax - ZPR, 64K, C, S, P$229.00 

IDEAmini - YPR, C, S, P $189.00 

IDEAminimax - MPR 128K... $229.00 
IDEAshare Software $219.00 

QUADRAM 

Quadboard $229.00 

Quadboard II $229.00 

Expanded Quadboard $239.00 

Quad 512 + $249.00 

Quad 2 Meg $879.00 

Memory Board $229.00 

QuadJr Exp. Chassis $539.00 

QuadJr Exp. Memory $219.00 

QuadMemJr $229.00 

Chronograph $89.99 

Parallel Card... $69.99 

AST 

Six Pack Plus $239.00 

Mega Plus II $269.00 

I/O Plus II $139.00 

Memory MBII $249.00 

Advantage-AT $399.00 

TECMAR 

Captain - 64 $239.00 

Captain Jr. 128K.... $339.00 

PARADISE 

Five Pack - C, S, P $189.00 

VIDEO CARDS 

Amdek • MAI $249.00 

AST - Preview Monograph $299.00 

Graph Pak Mono/64K.. .$599.00 

MonoGraph Plus $399.00 

Hercules - Graphics $349.00 

Color $199.00 

Paradise - Modular Graphics. $319.00 

Multi-Display $299.00 

Eagle - Color $199.00 

Quadram - Quadcolor I $219.00 

Quadgraph $379.00 

MAINFRAME 

AST 5251/11 CALL 

5251 $579.00 

3780 $639.00 

BSC $499.00 

DCA IRMA 3270 $899.00 

KEYBOARDS 

Keytronics Keyboards 5150, 5151, 
5151 Jr. 5149 Jr.... CALL 

MEMORY CHIPS 

4164 RAM Chips ea. $2.99 

HARD DRIVES 

Alloy CALL 

IDEAssociates - 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 40 

and 45 meg from $1299.00 

Iomega 10, 20 meg from $2149.00 

TallGrass 20,30,80 meg from $2699.00 
Tandon SVi" 320K Floppy... $139.00 




^ 



SOFTWARE 

LOTUS 

Symphony $449.00 

1-2-3 $309.00 



Hayes 



Please (Data Base) $239.00 

PEACHTREE SOFTWARE 

PeachPaek (GL/AP/AR)..... $219.00 

MICROPRO 

WordStar 2000 $279.00 

M1GROMIM 
R:Base 4000 $279.00 

MULTIMATE INT. 
Multi Mate $269.00 

MIGROSTUF 

Crosstalk $99.99 

MICROSOFT 

Flight Simulator $39.99 

MultiPlan $139.00 

ASHTONTATE 

Framework $349.00 

dBASE II $299.00 

dBASE III $389.00 

dBASE II upgrade $139.00 

Friday! $179.00 

PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE 

PC Plus/The Boss $269.00 

SYNAPSE 

File Manager $59.99 

ELECTRONIC ARTS 

Get Organized $79.99 

Cut -n- Paste $39.99 

Music Construction $29.99 

One -on- One.... $29.99 

Financial Cookbook $34.99 

ALPHA SOFTWARE 

Electronic Desk $219.00 

BORLAND 

Turbo Pascal ..$39.99 

Sidekick. $39.99 

SPI 

Open Access $399.00 

HARVARD SOFTWARE INC. 

Harvard Project Manager $229.00 

PFS 
IBM/APPLE 

Access (NEW) ..$89.99 

Write....' $89.99 

Graph $89.99 

Report $79.99 

File $89.99 

Plan $89.99 

HUMAN EDGE SOFTWARE 

Communication Edge ..$129.00 

Management Edge. $165.00 

Negotiation Edge $195.00 

Sales Edge $165.00 




PC COMPATIBLES 

^ SANYO 

MBC 680 $639.00 

MBC 580-2 $749.00 

PC 150 Desktop CALL MBC 885 $879.00 

PC-160 Portable .CALL M *C B5ML $1099.00 

COLUMBIA 

Desktops CALL D eB ktops CALL 

Portables CALL Portables.. CALL 



MBC 775 



Portable... 

CORONA 



.CALL 



APPLE 



APPLE He PROFESSIONAL PACK 

64K Apple He, Dual Disk Drive & 
Controller, Extended 80 Column Card, 
Monitor II & DOS 3.3 CALL 



APPLE lie CALL 

APPLE He CALL 

MacINTOSH CALL 

He LCD Display CALL 



300 Green $129.00 

300 Amber $149.00 

300 Color/Audio $259,00 

310 Amber IBM-Plug $169.00 

Color 500 Composite/RGB/VCR$389.00 
Color 600 Hi-Res (640 x 240).$439,00 
Color 700 Hi-Res (720 x 240).$499.00 
Color 710 Long Phosphor $579.00 

BMC 
1201 Plus (12" Green Hi-Res). $88. 99 

9191U Color $209.00 

9191 Color Plus $229.00 

NAP 
12" Amber. $69.99 

JB 1260 Greenf^.^.T" $99.99 

JB 1201 Green $139.00 

JB 1205 Amber .$149.00 

JB 1215 Color $229.00 

JC 1216 RGB $379.00 

JC 1460 Color $269.00 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS 

MAX-12 Amber $199.00 

HX-12 RGB $489 00 

SR-12 RGB....... $629.00 



MONITORS 8AKATA 

SC-100 Color $249.00 

SG-1000 Green $129.00 

SA-1000 Amber $139.00 

115 12" Green Mono $99.99 

116 12" Amber Mono $99.99 

121 Green TTL $149.00 

122 Amber TTL $159.00 

210 Color RGB $239.00 

400 Med-Res RGB $319.00 

415 Hi-Res RGB $439.00 

420 Hi-Res RGB (IBM) ..$429.00 

440 Ultra Hi-Res RGB $649.00 

QUADRAM 

8400 Quadchrome $489.00 

8410 Quadchrome II $479.00 

8420 Amberchrome $199.00 



ZVM 122 AmberT. $84.99 

ZVM 123 Green $84.99 

ZVM 124-IBM Amber $149.00 

ZVM 131 Color $309.00 

ZVM 133 RGB $429.00 

ZVM 135-RGB/Color $459.00 

ZVM 136-RGB/Color $629.00 



Volksmodem $59.99 

Volksmodem XII $189.99 

Mark IL Serial $79.99 

Mark VII {Auto Ans/Auto Dial)$99.99 
Mark XII (1200 Baud) $259.00 



MODEMS 

AST 

Reach 1200 Baud Half Card. .$599. 00 



Novation 



©Hayes* 



Smartmodem 300 $199.00 

Smartmodem 1200 $419.00 

Smartmodem 1200B $389.00 

Smartmodem 2400 $699.00 

Micromodem He $269.00 

Micromodem 100 $149.00 

Smart Com II $89.99 

Chronograph $199.00 



Smart Cat Plus $329.00 

J-Cat $99.99 

Smart Cat 103 $179.00 

Smart Cat 103/212 .$399.00 

AutoCat $219.00 

212 AutoCat $549.00 

Apple Cat II $249.00 

212 Apple Cat..*: $449.00 

Apple Cat 212 Upgrade $259.00 



Jftwgg y 



ZT-l >TT $339.00 

ZT-10 $309.00 

ZT-11 ..$369.00 




1-800-233-8950 

Gall: (717) 327-9575 

EAST 

477 E. 3rd St., Dept. A104 

Williamsport, PA 17701 

Customer Service Number: (717) 327-1450 



IS 



TOLL FREE 
ORDER LINE 

In PA 
WEST 

P.O. Box 6689, Dept. A 104 
Stateline, NV 89449 
Order Status Number: (717) 327-9576 
Open purchase orders accepted with net 30 days terms, subject to credit approval. Next day shipping on all stock items. No risk, no deposit 
on C.O.D. orders and no waiting period for certified checks or money orders. Add 3% (minimum $5) shipping and handling on all orders. 
Larger shipments may require additional charges. NV and PA residents add sales tax. All items subject to availability and price change. 
Call today for our catalog. 

300 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



CANADIAN ORDERS »*»"" 

Ontario/Quebec: 1-800-268-3974 
Other Provinces: 1-800-268-4559 

In Toronto: (416) 828-0866 Telex: 06-218960 

2505 Dunwin Drive, Unit 3 

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L1T1 



...THE BEST PRICES 




AXIOM 

AT- 100 Atari Interface Printer$ 159.00 

AT-550 Atari Dual Mode $259.00 

GP-100 Parallel Interface $189.00 

GP-700 Atari Color Printer... $489 .00 

GP-550 Parallel Printer $269.00 

BMC 

401 Letter Quality $589.00 

BX-80 Dot Matrix $229 00 

CITIZEN 

MSP-10 (80 col) $349.00 

MSP-15 (132 col) $539.00 

C.ITOH 

Prowriter 7500 $269.00 

Prowriter 8510P $339.00 

Prowriter 1550P $569.00 

Son of Starwriter A10P $479.00 

Hot Dot Matrix CALL 

F10-40P Starwriter $949 .00 

F 10-55 Printmaster $1099.00 

COMREX 
ComWriterll Letter Quality.. $399. 00 

DIABLO 

620 Letter Quality $749.00 

630 API Letter Quality $1549.00 

DAISYWRITER 
2000 $949.00 

EPSON 

RX-80, RX-80FT + , RX-100 CALL 

FX-80 + , FX-100 + , LX-80 CALL 

LQ 1500, JX80 Color CALL 

JUKI 

6100 $439.00 

6300 $749.00 

MANNESMAN TALLY 

Spirit 80 $239.00 

160L $569.00 

180L..... $699.00 



PRINTERS 

NEC 

8027 Transportable $329.00 

2010/16/30 $719.00 

2050 IBM $639.00 

3510/15/30 $1299.00 

3550 IBM $1399.00 

8810/15/30 $1699.00 

8850 IBM $1749.00 

OKJDAIA 

82, 83, 84, 92, 93, 180, 

2350, 2410, Okimate-20 CALL 

0kimate-64 $199.00 

Okimate - Atari $199.00 

OLYMPIA 

Needlepoint Dot Matrix $339.00 

Compact RO $399.00 

Compact 2 $439.00 

PANASONIC 

KX1090 $219.00 

KX1091 $299.00 

KX1092 $449.00 

KX1093 $639.00 

QUADBAM 

Quadjet $749.00 

SILVER REED 

400 Letter Quality $279.00 

500 Letter Quality .....$329.00 

550 Letter Quality $459.00 

770 Letter Quality $799.00 

STAR MICRONICS 

SG10 (120 cps) $249.00 

SG15 (120 cps) $419.00 

SD10 (160 cps) $379.00 

SD15 (160 cps).... .....$499.00 

SR10 (200 cps) $529.00 

SR15 (200 cps). $669.00 

Powertype $329.00 

TOSHIBA 

1340 $769.00 

1351 $1349.00 



INTERFACES 



PRACTICAL PERIPHERALS 

Graphcard $84.99 

Seriall Card .....$109.00 

Microbuffer II + ,$179.00 

Microbuffer 32K ....$199.00 

QUADBAM 

Microfazer - from $139.00 

Efazer (Epson) from $79.99 

MICBOBITS 
MB1150 (Atari) $79.99 

What HEWLETT 
%LHM PACKARD 

41CV $189.99 

41CX $249.99 

HP 71B $419.99 

HP 11C $62.99 

HP 12C $89.99 

HP 15G $89.99 

HP 16C $89.99 

HP 75D , $999.99 

HPIL Module $98.99 

HPIL Cassette or Printer $359.99 

Card Reader J* $143.99 

Extended Function Module $63.99 

Time Module $63.99 

We stock the full line of 
HP calculator products 



VISA 



ORANGE MICRO 

Grappler CD (C64) $99.99 

Grappler + (Apple) $109.00 

Grappler 16K + (Apple) $189.00 

DIGITAL DEVICES 

Ape Face (Atari) $49.99 

Uprint (Atari) $59.99 

Uprint (C-64) ...$59.99 

Printer Buffer P-16 $79.99 



NEC 



PC-8401 CALL 

PC-8201 Portable Computer. .$299.00 

PC-8231 Disk Drive $619.00 

PC-8221A Thermal Printers. .$149.00 

PC-8281A Data Recorder $99.99 

PC-8201-06 8K RAM Chips $105.00 

SHARP 

PC-13B0 $189.99 

PC-1261 $189.99 

PC-1860 $109.99 

PC-1B00A $168.99 

PC-1880A $88.99 

CE-125 Printer/Cassette $128.99 

CE-150 Color Printer Cassette$ 171.99 
CE-161 16K RAM $134.99 



ATARI 



* 



HOME COMPUTERS 

65XE (64K) CALL 

130XB (128K) F q H 

130ST (128K) puTrTlTfl 

520ST (812K) VMmMMU 

600XL Sc 800XL CALL WHILE SUPPLIES LAST 



850 Interface $109.00 

1010 Recorder $49.99 

1020 Color Printer $79.99 

1025 Dot Matrix Printer $199.99 

1027 Letter Quality Printer. .$269.99 
1030 Direct Connect Modem. ...$69.99 

1050 Disk Drive $179.99 

Touch Tablet $64.99 

7097 Atari Logo $74.99 

4018 Pilot (Home) $57.99 

5049 VisiCalc $59.99 



CX30 Paddles $11.99 

CX40 Joystick $7.99 

4011 Star Raiders $12.99 

4022 PacMan $16.99 

4025 Defender $32.99 

8026 Dig Dug $32.99 

8031 Donkey Kong $32.99 

8034 Pole Position $32.99 

8043 Ms PacMan 32.99 

8044 Joust $32.99 

8052 Moon Patrol .$32.99 



DISK DRIVES 



MEMORY BOARDS 

Axlon 32K $39.99 lMFHTC" 

Axlon 48K $69.99 llNULO 

Axlon 128K $269.99 GT Drive (Atari) $259.00 

Microbits 64K (600) $109.00 



ATR-8000-16K Z80 CP/M $349.00 

ATR-8000-64K Z80 CFM $499.00 

BIT 3 



Rana 1000... $199.00 

MODEMS 



Pull View 80 $239.00 Micro Bits MB-1100.. 

COMMODORE 



..$129.99 



NEW Commodore 128, LCD... 
CBM 8038 $639.00 

CBM 4032 $599.00 

CBM 9000 $999.00 

2031 LP Disk Drive $299.00 

8050 Disk Drive $999.00 

8250 Disk Drive. $1249.00 

4023 Printer $329.00 

8023 Printer $589.00 

6400 Printer $1349.00 

Z-RAM $299.00 

Silicon Office $299,00 

PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE 

Word Pro 4 Plus/5 Plus each. $239. 00 

Info Pro $179.00 

Administrator $399.00 

Power $69.99 



SD1 Disk Drive $299.00 

SD2 Disk Drive $529.00 

INDUS 

Indus GT/C64 $269.00 



CALL 

SX-64 Portable .$499.00 

Commodore Plus 4.. $199.00 

CBM 64 $149.00 

C1541 Disk Drive $199.00 

C1530 Datasette $39.99 

M-801 Dot Matrix Printer $189.00 

M-802 Dot Matrix/Serial $219.00 

MCS 803 Dot Matrix $179.00 

C1802 Color Monitor... $199.00 

C1660 Auto Modem $89.99 

DPS 1101 Daisy Printer $339.00 

PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE 

Fleet System II w/Spellix .$59.99 

PI'S 

File (64) .....$59.99 

Report (64) $59.99 

PRECISION SOFTWARE 
Superbase 64 $59.99 

PaperClip w/Spell Pack $84.99 

The Consultant DBMS $69.99 

Bus Card II $149.00 

80 Col Display $149.00 

PERSONAL PERIPHERALS 
Super Sketch Graphics Pad $39.99 



maxell 



DISKETTES 



5V4" MD-1 $18.99 

5V4" MD-2 $28.99 

8" FD-1 $39.99 

8" FD-2 .....$49.99 

VERBATIM 

5 3 /4" SS/DD $21.99 

5V4 1 ' DS/DD $29.99 

BIB 

5V 4 " Disk Head Cleaner $14.99 



Elephant SVa" SS/SD $14.99 

Elephant 5 'A" SS/DD $16.99 

Elephant 5V4" DS/DD $20.99 

Elephant EMSP 5V4 $29.99 

DISK HOLDERS 
INNOVATIVE CONCEPTS 

Flip-in-File 10 $3.99 

Flip-in-File 50 $17.99 

Flip-in-File 50 w/lock $24.99 

Flip-in-File (400/800 ROM) $17.99 



(MortwfOapd) 




TOLL FREE 
ORDER LINE 

In PA Call 
WEST 

P.O. Box 6689, Dept. A104 
Stateline, NV 89449 



1-800-233-8950 

(717) 327-9575 



EAST 

477 E. 3rd St., Dept. A104 

Williamsport, PA 17701 

Customer Service Number; (717) 327-1450 



(o 

CANADIAN ORDERS »**«*■ 
Ontario/Quebec: 1-800-268-3974 
Other Provinces: 1-800-268-4559 

In Toronto: (416) 828-0866 Telex: 06-218960 

2505 Dunwin Drive, Unit 3 

Misslssauga, Ontario, Canada L5L1T1 



Order Status Number: (717) 327-9576 
CANADIAN ORDERS: All prices are subject to shipping, tax and currency fluctuations. Call for exaot pricing in Canada. INTERNATIONAL 
ORDERS: All orders placed with U.S. offices for delivery outside the Continental United States must be pre-paid by certified check only. 
Include 3% (minimum $5) shipping and handling. EDUCATIONAL DISCOUNTS: Additional discounts are available to qualified Educa- 
tional Institutions. APO & FPO: Add 3% (minimum $5) shipping and handling. 



Inquiry 86 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 301 






or<? 



* 



<9 



# 



# 



COMPUTERS 

AltOS All Computer Models Call 

Columbia Call 

NEC 

PC-8201 Computer $315 

PC- 820 1A-90 Battery Pack $15 

PC-8206A 32K Ram $215 

PC-B271A-01 AC Adapter $16 

PC827 1 A-02 AC Adapter $ 1 * 

PC-8281A Recorder 589 

Northstar 

All Computer Model* Col I 

SanyO MBC-775 Portable Call 

MBC 5 50 System Call 

MBC-555 System Call 

MBCS50-2 System Call 

MBC-555-2 System Call 

MBC 885 Call 

Televideo 

803 

804 

1605D 

1605C 

1605H 

1605CH 

TPC-1 

TPC2 Single Drive 

TPC-2 Dual Dnve 

Visual 

Commuter 

Zenith 

Z-150 Single Drive - 

2-150 Dual Drive 

Z-150 W/10 Megabyte Sava 25% 



$1915 
$3429 
$1909 
$2299 
$3459 
$3549 
$755 
$1509 
$1749 



Saw 25% 
Save 25% 



Z-160 Single Drive 
Z-160 Dual Drive 



DISK DRIVES 

Alpha Omega 

Turbo 10 

Iomega 

Bernoulli Box (or IBM 
10 Megabyte 
20 Megabyte 

Rana 

Elite I 
Elite II 
Elite III 

Elite lOH/Apple 
Controller «W/Dr.ve Only) 
WOO W/DOS for Atari 

Tallgrass 

TG-3020 
TG-313S 
TG-4060 

BOARDS 

AST 

Sin Pock Plus 

Paradise 

Modular Graphic 06? 
Five Pok 



Save 25% 
Save 25% 



$1950 
$2660 



$179 
$339 
$405 
$1080 
$69 
$305 



$2289 
$3689 
$1469 



$275 
$15« 



SILICON 

SP€CIIUTI€S 



PRINTERS 

Anadex 

96 2 58 
WP6000 

DP6500 

Brother 

DX 15 
DX-15XL 
HR 25 
HR-35 

C-ltoh 

A- 10-30 

F- 10 Porollel or Serial 

55 CPS 5enol or Parallel 

85 10 Parallel (Prownter) 

8510SP 

8510SCP 

8510BPI 

Comrex 

CR-2E Parallel 
CR-4 

420 

Data south 

DS180 
DS220 

Diablo 

620 

630 API 

630 ECS 

630 ECS/IBM 

Series 36 

80 IF 

P12CQ1 

P32COI 

S32CQI 

P38 

S38 

C150 

Epson All Prmter Models 

Inforunner 

Riteman w/Troctor 

Riteman 1 5 

Riteman Blue w/Tractor 

Juki 

5500 
6100 
6300 

NEC 

2010.2015,2030 

2050 

3510,3515,3530 

3550 

8810,8815,8830 
8850 
P2, P3 

Okidata aii Printm Models 
Panasonic 

1091 
1092 
1093 
KXP3151 

Silver Reed 

EXP400 

EXP500 Parallel or Serial 
EXP550 Parallel or Serial 
EXP770 Parallel or Serial 

Star Micronics 

All Printer ModeU 

Tally 

Sp.r.t 80 

Toshiba 

P1340Parolle)or Serial 
P1351 Parallel or Serial 

MODEMS 

Anchor Automation 

Anchor Express 
Mark XII 

Hayes 

Smartmodem 300 Baud 
Smartmodem 1200 Baud 
Smartmodem 1200B(IBM) 

Micromodem HE (Apple) 

Novation 

Smart Cot Plus 

Prometheus ah models 
Raca I -Vadic ah Models 

US RobotiCS Password 1200 



$1129 
$2039 
$2259 

$355 
$ 365 

$649 
$875 

$459 

$859 
$1019 
$299 
$385 
$459 
$309 



$375 
Call 
Call 



$1089 
$1315 



MONITORS 

Amdek All Monitors 

Princeton Graphic 

HX-12 

Sanyo 

CRT 30 
CRT-36 
CRT 50 

CRT70 

Taxan 

121 Green 

122 Amber 
420 RGB 

425 RGB/Green 

Zenith 

ZVM- 122 Amber 

ZVM-123 Green 

ZVM 124 

ZVM-130 

ZVM- 133 Color/RGB 

ZVM- 135 Color/RGB W/Audi 

ZVM136 



Enter 

Sweet P600 



Prices reflect 3% to 5% cash discount. Product shipped in factory cartons with manufacturer's warranty. Please add $8.00 per order 
for UPS shipping. Prices & availability subject to change without notice. Send cashier's check or money order ... all other checks will delay 
shipping two weeks. 




ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



THE 

TECHNOLOGY OF 
EXPERT SYSTEMS 

by Robert H. Michaelsen, Donald Michie, and Albert Boulanger 



Transplanting expert knowledge to machines 



THE PURPOSE OF this article is to in- 
troduce expert systems. Initially, we'll 
define these systems. Next, we'll 
discuss methods for building them, in- 
cluding the advantages and disadvan- 
tages of each method. Finally, we'll 
review the computer resources 
needed to build and run expert 
systems. 

Definition 

Expert systems are a class of com- 
puter programs that can advise, 
analyze, categorize, communicate, 
consult design, diagnose, explain, ex- 
plore, forecast, form concepts, iden- 
tify, interpret, justify learn, manage, 
monitor, plan, present, retrieve, 
schedule, test, and tutor. They ad- 
dress problems normally thought to 
require human specialists for their 
solution. Some of these programs 
have achieved expert levels of perfor- 
mance on the problems for which 
they were designed (see reference 6). 
Expert systems are usually devel- 
oped with the help of human experts 
who solve specific problems and 
reveal their thought processes as they 
proceed. If this process of protocol 



analysis is successful, the computer 
program based on this analysis will be 
able to solve the narrowly defined 
problems as well as an expert. (For a 
discussion of successful expert sys- 
tems, see reference 2.) 

Experts typically solve problems 
that are unstructured and ill-defined, 
usually in a setting that involves 
diagnosis or planning. They cope with 
this lack of structure by employing 
heuristics, which are the rules of 
thumb that people use to solve prob- 
lems when a lack of time or under- 
standing prevents an analysis of all the 
parameters involved. Likewise, expert 
systems employ programmed heuris- 
tics to solve problems. Figure 1 is an 
example of a complex heuristic used 
by TAXADVISOR, an expert system 
that gives estate-planning advice (see 
reference 17). 

Experts engage in several different 
problem-solving activities. For in- 
stance, the following problem-solving 
activities have been identified in 
MYCIN (see figure 2): identify the 
problem, process data, generate 
questions, collect information, estab- 
lish hypothesis space, group and dif- 



ferentiate, pursue and test hypothesis, 
explore and refine, ask general ques- 
tions, and make a decision (see ref- 
erence 11). 
Experts are capable of 

• Applying their expertise to the solu- 
tion of problems in an efficient man- 
ner. They are able to employ plausi- 
ble inference and reasoning from in- 
complete or uncertain data. 

• Explaining and justifying what they 
do. 

• Communicating well with other ex- 

icontinued) 
Robert H. Michaelsen is an assistant professor 
of accounting at the University of Nebraska 
(Lincoln, NE 68588-0488). He received his 
Ph.D. in accountancy from the University of 
Illinois. Donald Michie is Director of Research 
at the luring Institute (36 North Hanover 
St.. Glasgow Gl 2AD, Scotland). Formerly 
a professor at the University of Edinburgh, 
he is the author of numerous books and ar- 
ticles on artificial intelligence. Albert 
Boulanger is a scientist for Bolt Beranek and 
Newman Inc. (10 Moulton St., Cambridge, 
MA 02238). He has a master's degree in 
computer science from the University of Illinois 
at Urbana-Champaign. 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 303 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



perts and acquiring new knowledge. 

• Restructuring and reorganizing 
knowledge. 

• Breaking rules. They have almost as 
many exceptions as they have rules. 
They understand both the spirit and 
the letter of a rule. 

• Determining relevance. They know 
when a problem is outside their ex- 
pertise and when to make referrals. 

• Degrading gracefully. At the boun- 
daries of their expertise, they become 
gradually less proficient at solving 
problems, rather than suddenly incap- 
able (see reference 4}. 

Expert systems have modeled only 
the first three expert capabilities to 
any extent, and even explanation and 
knowledge acquisition have just 
begun. 

Expert systems, like human experts, 
can have both deep and surface rep- 
resentations of knowledge. Deep rep- 
resentations are causal models, cate- 
gories, abstractions, and analogies. In 



such cases, we try to represent an 
understanding of structure and func- 
tion. Surface representations are 
often empirical associations but are 
sometimes "compiled" from an un- 
derstanding of structure and function. 
In the former case, the association 
between premises and conclusions of 
rules is based on empirical observa- 
tion of past association. Causality is 
implicit in the rule, rather than explicit. 
Deep representations enhance the 
explanatory powers of expert sys- 
tems. With surface representations, all 
the system knows is that an empirical 
association exists; it is unable to ex- 
plain why, beyond repeating the as- 
sociation. Where more fundamental 
insight is available, deep representa- 
tion will enable the system to respond 
more substantively. If computer induc- 
tion is used for knowledge acquisi- 
tion, a model for understanding 
events in the domain (a deep repre- 
sentation) often guides the induction 
of rules from examples by 



RULE 216 

(This rule applies to clients and is tried to find out whether a short-term trust should 
be recommended.) 



11 



D 



The client and/or spouse do wish to shift property income to another (not 

for legal support), etc., for at least 10 years or until the death of the 

beneficiary, 

The client and/or spouse do desire to eventually reclaim control of this 

property (for retirement, estate liquidity, etc.), 

The client and/or spouse are in a higher income bracket than the 

beneficiary, 

The client and/or spouse are willing to relinquish control of the beneficial 

enjoyment of the property. 

The client and/or spouse are able to provide for their living needs without 

this income, even in the event of disability or unemployment, 

The client and/or spouse do not plan to have the trust income used to 

pay life-insurance premiums on his/her life without the consent of an 

adverse party, 

The client and/or spouse do not plan to use the trust for a leaseback of 

assets, and 

A: The client and/or spouse have a person (eg,, a parent) they are 

supporting without legal obligation with this property income (will lose 

a dependent if trust is formed), 

The client and/or spouse have a child, not a minor, that they will be 

putting through college with this property income (can set up early 

and accumulate income without tax problems), or 
C: The client and/or spouse are using some of their after-tax income for 

the benefit of some other taxpayer (child's marriage and/or home 

purchase, etc.), 
Then: It is definite (1.0) that client should TRANSFER ASSETS TO A SHORT-TERM 
TRUST, 



2) 
3) 
4) 

5) 
6) 

7) 
8) 



3 



Figure I: An example of a TAXADVISOR rule. 



distinguishing meaningful hypotheses 
from coincidences in the data. It is 
also likely that deep representation 
will enhance the incorporation of the 
last four previously listed expert capa- 
bilities into expert systems. Surface 
representations have offered little in 
this regard. 

However, surface representations 
have their advantages if the only con- 
cern is problem-solving performance, 
empirical associations, or compiled 
understanding. They should be less 
costly to formulate than causal 
models. This lower cost can provide 
a reasonable level of explanation 
along with a primitive form of knowl- 
edge acquisition. If a domain's exper- 
tise is based on empirical association, 
as in many areas of medicine, surface 
representations are the only kind 
available (see reference 4). 

The best approach to expert-system 
building is probably to use deep rep- 
resentations when they are cost-effec- 
tive and surface representations for 
the rest of the system. This approach 
has already been explicated in a 
paper by Hart (reference 12) and im- 
plemented in Digitalis Advisor, a sys- 
tem that provided advice on digitalis 
dosages for cardiac patients (see ref- 
erence 29). 

Building Expert Systems 

An expert system is able to make 
decisions on a par with an expert pri- 
marily because its structure reflects 
the manner in which human special- 
ists arrange and make inferences from 
their knowledge of the subject. The 
system is driven by a database of in- 
exact and judgmental knowledge that 
is typically made up of if-then rules 
when surface representation is used, 
or frames and semantic nets when 
deep representation is used (see "A 
Glossary of Artificial Intelligence 
Terms" on page 138). Domain knowl- 
edge is processed in a strict order of 
deductive inference and is invoked by 
a pattern match with specified fea- 
tures of the task environment. Figure 
3 is an example of pattern matching 
by TAXADVISOR. Because uncertain- 
ty is usually involved in expert judg- 
ments, expert systems must allow 



304 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



conclusions to be reached with less 
than certainty. Figure 4 illustrates how 
TAXADVISOR copes with uncertain- 
ty during a consultation. (For more in- 
formation on uncertainty mechanisms 
in expert systems, see reference 32.) 

The type of computer program that 
is used to develop an expert system 
cannot have its flow of control and 
data utilization rigidly fixed because 
such a structure is ill-adapted for 
simulating a human's responses to a 
complex, rapidly changing, and un- 
familiar environment. Instead, such a 
program must examine the state of 
the world at each step of the decision 
process and react appropriately 
because new stimuli continually arise. 
The type of program that has been 
developed to cope with this constant 
change is a loosely organized collec- 
tion of pattern-directed modules 
(PDMs) that detect situations and re- 
spond to them (see reference 31). The 
rule in figure 1 is a PDM from TAX- 
ADVISOR. 

Each PDM examines and modifies 
data structures that model critical 
aspects of the external environment, 
in TAXADVISOR, the client's financial- 
planning situation and objectives con- 
stitute the environment. A PDM 
should be written as a single and 
separate unit that is independently 
meaningful within the task domain of 
the program. This aids incremental 
program growth and debugging, since 
revision of one PDM does not affect 
the others. It also provides explana- 
tion power; a single PDM can be used 
to explain a recommendation by the 
system. 

Any system composed of several 
PDMs, one or more data structures 
that may be examined and modified 
by the PDMs, and an executive pro- 
gram to schedule and run the PDMs 
is called a pattern-directed inference 
system (PDIS). In effect, a PDIS factors 
complex problems into manageable, 
largely independent subproblems. 

Surface Representations 

Rule-based systems (RBSs) were 
originally used in cognitive modeling 
of short-term memory. Since expert 

[continued} 



CONSULT 



, MAKE DIAGNOSIS ^ 



PROCESS 
DATA 



IDENTIFY 
PROBLEM 

Js \ 

\ 
GENERATE 
QUESTIONS 



REVIEW 
DIFFERENTIAL 



ESTABLISH 

HYPOTHESIS 
SPACE 



PROCESS 

DATUM 
(HEADACHE) 



GROUP EXPLORE 

AND AND 

DIFFERENTIATE REFINE 





TEST 
HYPOTHESIS 

(INFECTION) 



PROCESS 

DATA 



PROCESS 

DATUM 

(FEBRILE ) 



TEST PURSUE 

HYPOTHESIS HYPOTHESIS 
(MENINGITIS) (VIRUS) 



TEST 
HYPOTHESIS 
(VIRUS) 



Q5 



06 



Figure 2: The MYCIN problem-solving hierarchy. Question numbers (Q2, etc.) 
correspond to questions asked in the consultation. Solid lines show tasks actually done, 
dashed lines those that might be done. (Figure used with permission: see reference 11.) 







P restored 


Client's 


Necessary Attributes for Short-Term Trust 


Value 


Value 


D 


Does client wish to shift property income to 
another (not for legal support) for at least 10 








years or until the death of the beneficiary? 


yes 


yes 


2) 


Does client desire to eventually reclaim 








control of the property? 


yes 


yes 


3) 


Is client in a higher income-tax bracket than 








the beneficiary? 


yes 


yes 


4) 


Is client willing to relinquish control of the 








beneficial enjoyment of the property? 


yes 


yes 


5) 


Is client able to provide for his living needs 
without this income even if disabled or 








unemployed? 


yes 


yes 


6) 


Does client plan to have trust income pay life- 
insurance premiums on his life without 








consent of an adverse party? 


no 


no 


7) 


Does client plan to use the trust for a 








leaseback of assets? 


no 


no 


8) 


Does client have a person he is supporting 








without legal obligation? 


yes 


yes 



Figure 3: Aw example of pattern matching done by TAXADVISOR, performed to 
determine if the client should be forming a short-term trust. The Prestored Value column 
shows the pattern of attribute values that a client must have before TAXADVISOR 
will recommend a transfer of assets to a short-term trust. Since the client's pattern 
matches the prestored one. the trust will be recommended. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 305 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



(begin) 



—Formation of a Temporary Trust— 



1) Does client wish to shift property income to another (not for legal support) for at 
least 10 years or until the death of the beneficiary? 

••YES 

2) Does client desire to eventually reclaim control of the property? 
"YES 

3) Is dient in a higher income-tax bracket than the beneficiary? 
"YES 

4) Is client willing to relinquish control of the beneficial enjoyment of the property? 
"WHY 

This will aid in determining whether client should form a temporary trust It has 
already been established that 

1) Client wishes to shift property income to another (not for legal support) for at 
least 10 years or until the death of the beneficiary, 

2) desires to eventually reclaim control of the property, and 

3) is in a higher income-tax bracket than the beneficiary. 

Therefore, if 

1) client is willing to relinquish control of the beneficial enjoyment of the property, 

2) is able to provide for his living needs without this income, even if disabled or 
unemployed, 

3) does not plan to have trust income pay life-insurance premiums on his life 
without the consent of an adverse party, 

4) does not plan to use the trust for a leaseback of assets, and 

5) A: has a person (eg., a parent) he is supporting without legal obligation with 

this property income, 
B: has a child, not a minor, that he will be putting through college with this 

property income, or 
C: is using some of his after-tax income for the benefit of some other 

taxpayer, 

then 

client should form a temporary trust 
(back to question 4 . . . ) 

"YES 

5) Is client able to provide for his living needs without this income, even if disabled 
or unemployed? 

"YES (8) [Whenever a response is made with less than certainty, the system user 
enters a number betwen 1 and 9 indicating his degree of certainty in that response] 

6) Does client plan to have trust income pay life-insurance premiums on his life 
without consent of an adverse party? 

"NO 

7) Does client plan to use the trust for a leaseback of assets? 
"NO 

8) Does client have a person he is supporting without legal obligation? 
"YES 

I recommend that the client form a short-term trust. 

[The degree of certainty that the system has in this recommendation is .8. This 
certainty factor (OF) was calculated as follows. The temporary trust rule's action CF 
was 1.0 and it had an "AND" premise. In such a case, the rule's CF is the minimum 
CF used in the responses, or .8. Since the system's threshold CF is .2, the 
recommendation was made] 

(end) 



Figure 4: A partial interactive consultation with TAXADVISOR. The user's input is 
in uppercase. 



systems attempt to imitate people, it 
was natural that RBSs would also be 
used in their development. To date, 
RBSs are by far the most common 
structure for expert systems. Among 
the successful rule-based expert sys- 
tems that have been developed are 
the following: 

• MYCIN— diagnoses infections (ref- 
erence 26) 

• HEURISTIC DENDRAL-identifies 
organic compounds (reference 8) 

• PROSPECTOR-aids geologists in 
evaluating mineral sites (reference 5) 

• PUFF— analyzes pulmonary function 
tests (reference 15) 

• INTERNIST-performs diagnosis in 
internal medicine (reference 22) 

• XCON (formerly Rl)— configures the 
VAX-1 1/780 computer system 
(reference 16) 

• SACON— provides engineers with 
advice on structural analysis (ref- 
erence 1) 

Because of the popularity of RBSs, 
several domain-independent systems 
have been developed to make it much 
easier to build rule-based expert 
systems in many fields. The following 
is a partial list of domain-independent 
systems: 

• EMYCIN (reference 30) 
•AGE (reference 21) 

• OPS 5 (reference 16) 

• ADVISE (reference 18) 

• Hearsay-3 (reference 7) 

• AL/X (reference 23) 

• Expert-Ease (Human Edge Software 
Corp., Palo Alto, California) 

• KS 300 (Revamped EMYCIN; from 
Teknowledge Inc.. Palo Alto Califor- 
nia) 

• KES (Intelligenetics Inc.. Palo Alto, 
California) 

• Personal Consultant (Texas Instru- 
ments Inc., Dallas, Texas) 

An RBS is composed of PDMs 
called rules, each with a left-hand side 
(the antecedent, a logical combina- 
tion of propositions about the data- 
base) and a separate right-hand side 
(the consequent, a collection of ac- 
tions). An RBS separates data ex- 
amination (done by the left-hand side) 
from data modification (done by the 



306 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 168 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



right-hand side of the rule). 

Most RBSs are production systems 
(PSs), in which matching and schedul- 
ing are explicitly defined by the oper- 
ation of the executive (control) pro- 
gram. The control schema can be 
characterized as having four basic 
parts: 

1. Selection: select relevant rules and 
data elements. Selection may be 
trivial (e.g., on each cycle all rules and 
all data elements can be considered) 
or quite complex (e.g., special filters 
can be designed to eliminate from 
consideration many rules that could 
not possibly match the current data). 
In TAXADVISOR, rules are organized 
in a hierarchy to narrow the rules 
considered. 

2. Matching: compare active rules 
against active data elements, looking 
for patterns that match, i.e. rules 
whose conditions are satisfied. Figure 
3 is an example of pattern matching. 

3. Scheduling: decide which "satis- 
fied" rule should be "fired." "Firing" 
consists of accessing and executing 
the procedures associated with the 
pattern elements that matched the 
current data. If more than one rule is 
satisfied, conflict-resolution heuristics 
are used to decide which rule to fire. 

4. Execution: fire the rule chosen dur- 
ing the scheduling process. The result 
of execution is a modification of data 
elements or structure. With TAXAD- 
VISOR, execution results in an estate- 
planning recommendation for a client. 
This is illustrated in the test consulta- 
tion in Figure 4 (see reference 31). 

PSs are either consequent-driven 
systems or antecedent-driven systems. 
A consequent-driven (backward- 
chaining) system, which is the type 
used in TAXADVISOR, uses rule con- 
sequents (which represent goals) to 
guide the search for rules to fire (with 
TAXADVISOR, estate-planning ac- 
tions to recommend). The system col- 
lects those rules that can satisfy the 
goal in question and tries to satisfy 
the consequents of those rules, which 
usually represent the values of vari- 
ables. In order to find these values, 
the values of the rule antecedent must 



be found. To satisfy each antecedent, 
which represents a subgoal, the sys- 
tem collects those rules whose con- 
sequents satisfy its value The process 
of working backward through the 
rules from consequents to anteced- 
ents to consequents in search of a 
causal chain that will satisfy the goal 
is called backward chaining. (For a 
simple backward-chaining program 
written in BASIC see "Knowledge- 
Based Expert Systems Come of Age" 
by Richard O. Duda and ]ohn G. 
Gaschnig, September 1981 BYTE, 
page 238.) 

With antecedent-driven (forward- 
chaining) systems, program execution 
consists solely of a continuous se- 
quence of cycles terminating when a 
rules action dictates a halt. At each 
cycle, the system scans the anteced- 
ents and determines all rules with 
antecedents that are satisfied by the 
contents of the database. If there is 
more than one such rule, select one 
by means of a conflict-resolution 
strategy. Perform all actions asso- 
ciated with the selected rule and 
change the database accordingly. For 
example, with Rl (XCON), you enter 
all the information on the problem 
into the database and the system 
then applies the rules to reason for- 
ward from the data to the conclusions. 
In summary, forward chaining consists 
of putting the rules in a queue and 
then using a recognize-act cycle on 
them. 

Some forward-chaining systems try 
to control the search for rules in the 
recognize cycle by grouping rules into 
packets. These rule groupings are ap- 
pealing conceptual structures, since 
they group rules according to the sub- 
topic that they deal with. Object- 
oriented programming can also be 
used to organize collections of rules. 
In object-oriented programming, we 
give objects behavior, and thus we 
can distribute the control of rules into 
rule, rule-packet, and domain objects. 
This approach, which has been taken 
in LOOPS, a domain-independent sys- 
tem (see reference 27), also allows 
multiple instantiations of the same set 
of rules to solve subproblems of the 

[continued) 



Why do major 

hardware 

vendors 

endorse 

Golden 

Common Lisp? 

■ Wang Laboratories sees the 
COMMON LISP Standard as an 
important element of its strategy 
for advanced Office Automation. 
Wang Laboratories and Gold 
Hill Computers are both com- 
mitted to bringing Artificial 
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Automation and see COMMON 
LISP on the Wang product family 
as a vital step" 

Leo Chan 

Vice President, R&D 

Wang Laboratories 

u Idealfor entry-level AI opera- 
tions, the program package was 
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programmers as well as for 
program development. As a 
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compatible with Digitals 
recently announced VAX LISP" 

Arnold Kraft 

AI Marketing 

Digital Equipment Corporation 

u With the aimilability of these 
packages, the DATA GENERAL/ 
One gives engineering users a 
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Don McDougall, Vice President 

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Data General 

"GOLDEN COMMON LISP is the 
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Vice President, Marketing 

Symbolics, Inc. 




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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 307 



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308 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 53 



Inquiry 169 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



same type within one session. 

The primary difference between 
backward and forward chaining is a 
top-down versus bottom-up style of 
linking rules together. Though the 
most common, these are not the only 
control structures for rule-based 
systems. For example, rules are rep- 
resented as an "inference" network in 
PROSPECTOR (see reference 5). 

Deep Representations 

Frame- and network-based ap- 
proaches allow the implementation of 
"deeper-level" reasoning such as 
abstraction and analogy. Reasoning 
by abstraction and analogy is an im- 
portant expert activity You can also 
represent the objects (e.g., "pump" in 
figure 5) and processes (e.g., the "start" 
instructions in figure 5) of the domain 
of expertise at this level. What is im- 
portant are the relations between objects. 
Deep-representation expert systems 
perform inference using relations rep- 



resented by networks or frames. A 
semantic network is a graph of the 
relations. A frame or script system 
(see references 20 and 24) organize 
the objects and their relations into en- 
tities (recognizable collections of ob- 
jects). Frame systems also provide a 
system to inherit attributes from a tax- 
onomy of entities. Thus, a frame 
system implements the semantics of 
some of the relations between ob- 
jects. With a semantic-net or frame 
system you can represent objects of 
the domain of expertise as well as the 
process, strategies, etc., that are also 
part of the domain. The control of 
frame or semantic-net systems is 
usually much more involved than with 
surface systems and is implemented 
in a way that an explanation facility 
can't get at. But surface systems are 
"shallow"; a surface system may be 
viewed as a projection of deep-level 
knowledge of a domain for a specific 

{continued) 



/SOL A TED TWO -PORT DE VICE 

TO ALIGN-. 

•OPEN INLET VALVE 
•OPEN OUTLET VALVE 



MOTOR -DRIVEN PUMP 

TO START -. 

1. ALIGN PUMP 

2. START MOTOR 



— DX»-| [-1XH- 



-m 




WHEN START: 

• OPEN SUCTION VALVE 

BEFORE START MOTOR 

•OPEN DISCHARGE VALVE 

AFTER START MOTOR 



MAIN CONDENSATE PUMP 



TO START-. 

1.0PEN SUCTION VALVE 

2. START MOTOR 

3. OPEN DISCHARGE VALVE 



Figure 5: Procedure steps are obtained from the subcomponents and abstractions of an 
object, here a main condensate pump. This example comes from Steamer, a tutorial 
system designed to teach operating procedures of shipboard steam plants. 



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H.M. Seeburg 

Program Management Systems 
Hughes Aircraft Company 

"The Al Group at Arthur 
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for a major internal application. 
We are also using it as a vehicle 
for training a large base of firm 
personnel in Al technology." 
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Partner in charge of the Al Group 
Arthur Andersen & Company 

1A primary concern for Litton 
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Program Manager for Al 

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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 309 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



Some systems have 
a built-in capability 
for taking a file 
of expert decisions 
and generalizing 
from this knowledge 
an executable rule. 



expert activity. 

One type of expertise that has been 
represented with a deep-level ap- 
proach is tutoring (see The LISP 
TUtor" by John R. Anderson and Brian 
|. Reiser on page 159). Here we want 
to convey to the pupil domain knowl- 
edge that is best represented at the 
deep level: concepts, abstractions, 
analogies, and problem-solving strat- 
egies. 

Steamer is a training aid developed 
jointly by Bolt Beranek and Newman 
Inc. and the Navy Personnel Research 
and Development Center. Its goal is 
to teach operating procedures of 
shipboard steam plants. These pro- 
cedures consist of a series of steps on 
subcomponents of the plant. The 
components and procedures are rep- 
resented as frames in Steamer, as are 
the abstractions of components and 
procedures that experts use in 
teaching steam-plant operations. The 
steps of a procedure come from the 
abstractions and subcomponents of 
the device the procedure applies to. 
The ordering of the steps comes from 
a third represented entity: operating 
principles. These principles are culled 
from experienced operators and 
represent "compiled" knowledge of 
steam-plant operation (although they 
are not represented as rules but 
frames). 

Knowledge Acquisition 

The following are ways of acquiring 
knowledge in a form that can be used 
by an expert system (reference 19): 



• being told 

• analogy 

• example 

• observation, discovery, and experi- 
mentation 

• reasoning from deep structure 

The manual acquisition of knowledge 
from human experts is a very labor- 
intensive process. There is an ac- 
knowledged need to have aids for 
knowledge acquisition as part of the 
system. 

Methods to speed knowledge ac- 
quisition are now becoming available 
in the form of machine learning of 
rules from examples. Systems such as 
Expert-Ease have a built-in capabili- 
ty for taking a file of expert decisions 
from you and generalizing from these 
an executable rule. In a sense, you are 
able to transplant chunks of decision- 
making skill from your own brain to 
the personal computer, a possibility 
foreseen as early as 1966 by Earl 
Hunt and his colleagues. 

The machine procedure that allows 
this skill transplant was developed 
from a Pascal-coded program called 
ID3 (Iterative Dichotomiser 3) due to 
Professor Ross Quinlan of the New 
South Wales Institute of Science and 
Technology. 

A number of conclusions follow 
from Guinlan's work: 

1. It is possible, using such a program, 
to generate machine-executable solu- 
tions for complex decision problems 
in a fraction of the time a program- 
mer would need for developing a 
solution by conventional hand coding. 

2. The resulting solutions are super- 
efficient as compared with those ob- 
tainable by the old hand methods. 

3. It is important to make up your 
mind in advance whether super- 
efficiency is all you demand of a 
machine-executable solution, or 
whether you also want the resulting 
rule base to be understandable on 
inspection. 

If the answer to the third statement 
above is that user transparency of in- 
duced rules is desired, then (unless it 
is a very small one) do not treat your 
problem as one big superproblem 



with a single associated file of ex- 
amples. Instead, first break it down 
into a main problem and a set of sub- 
problems, even going further (to the 
level of sub-subproblems) if the com- 
plexity of the problem domain seems 
to call for it. The originators of this 
style, which is known as "structured 
induction," are Drs. Shapiro and 
Niblett (reference 2 5). Corporations 
enjoying the use of powerful inductive 
generators such as ITLs FORTRAN- 
based EX-TRAN system or Radian Cor- 
poration's C-coded RuleMaster have 
applied the approach to the building 
of complex systems for trouble- 
shooting large transformers, severe- 
storm warning, circuit-board fault 
diagnosis, and user-friendly guidance 
to set up numerical batch jobs in 
seismic analysis in the oil industry. 
Rates of production of compact in- 
stalled code in excess of 100 lines per 
worker day are now commonly re- 
ported. 

Any robust expert system takes a 
tremendous amount of resources to 
develop. Once developed, the knowl- 
edge along with the control structure 
can be "compiled out"; that is, the 
system of rules is rewritten into a 
piece of code that performs the same 
function on a personal computer. For 
example, some expert systems (AD- 
VISE, EMYCIN. OPS5-see reference 
10) can generate code or other 
primitive forms of the knowledge for 
use on a personal computer. (Systems 
run on a personal computer are usual- 
ly referred to as "delivery systems") 

Knowledge Representation 

As AI researchers point out, a robust 
expert system that can explain, justify, 
acquire new knowledge, adapt, break 
rules, determine relevance, and 
degrade gracefully will have to use a 
multitude of knowledge representa- 
tions that lie in a space whose dimen- 
sions include deep/surface, qualita- 
tive/quantitative, approximate (uncer- 
tainj/exact (certain), specific/general, 
and descriptive/prescriptive. Systems 
that use knowledge represented in 
different forms have been termed 
multilevel systems. Steamer is an exam- 
ple of one such expert system. 



310 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



Inquiry I 70 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



Steamer uses the following represen- 
tations: 

1. A graphical (icon) representation of 
the objects of the Steamer domain, 
such as valves, pumps, tanks, and sys- 
tems composed of these. 

2. A frame representation of Steamer 
objects, procedures, and operating 
principles. This is used for describing, 
explaining, categorizing, abstracting, 
and referring. 

3. An assertional database where 
assertions about Steamer entities can 
be made and retracted. 

4. A quantitative numerical simulation 
of the steam plant that is used in il- 
lustrating cause and effect and rami- 
fications of the application (or misap- 
plication) of procedures. 

Work is just beginning in building 
such multilevel systems, and they will 
be a major research topic for this 
decade. Work needs to be done in 
studying and representing in a 
general way the different problem- 
solving activities an expert does (see 
reference 3). When you build expert 
systems, you realize that the power 
behind them is that they provide a 
regimen for experts to crystallize and 
codify their knowledge, and in the 
knowledge lies the power. 

Resources Needed 

Before resource needs are discussed, 
you must precisely define the type of 
expert system you want to build. If 
you wish to build a large, "custom" 
model expert system (i.e., it is not 
feasible to use many of the smaller 
domain-independent systems that are 
available), you will need substantial 
resources: large memory, good lan- 
guage support, and fast execution of 
the code. You may need to develop 
such a system in LISP on hardware 
specialized to processing the lan- 
guage, or on time-sharing machines 
with a large address space. Such 
"custom" systems are usually referred 
to as "prototype" or "development" 
systems. They can either be devel- 
oped for a specific domain (e.g., 
MYCIN) or be domain-independent 
(e.g., ADVISE). 
If you are able to build a less com- 



plex expert system using an existing 
domain-independent system or if the 
system has a rule-compilation facility 
that allows applications to be run on 
personal computers, then a personal 
computer (preferably with 512K bytes) 
is sufficient. If all you need are 
resources to run an existing expert 
system, a large personal computer 
should nearly always be sufficient. 

There is no obvious line of demar- 
cation for a given project. However, 
certain barriers make personal com- 
puter use less desirable as system size 
and complexity increase. 

System Barriers 

Many high-level languages do not of- 
fer the right primitives (i.e., program- 
ming-Ianguage statements) for devel- 
oping expert systems. Among the de- 
sirable primitives are 

• A parser or interpreter that parses 
statements during program run time. 
Without this, you have to write a 
parser for the rules. 

• List and nonnumeric processing 
primitives. 

• A language design that allows in- 
cremental compilation and other fast 
prototyping facilities. Incremental 
compilation enables you to recompile 
a function or other portion of a file 
without recompiling the entire file. 

The view that many people in the 
field are adopting is that high-level 
languages like Pascal, Ada, and C are 
acceptable for the delivery system, 
but for prototyping, a language like 
LISP or Prolog is preferred. Program- 
generation tools are then used to 
write the system in the delivery 
language. 

The knowledge-intensive approach 
to expert systems implies that the 
memory will be highly utilized in all 
but the most nontrivial applications. 
AL/X is one example that ran on a 
64K-byte machine but it was a small 
expert-system shell. Since memory 
prices have gone down and many 
small machines have broken the 64K- 
byte barrier, we can expect that more 
expert systems can be developed, at 
least for the delivery system, on per- 

icontmued) 



Why do the 
AI experts 
recommend 
Golden 
Common Lisp? 

"We are excited about this 
product and its potential to 
optimize the method by which 
people learn. Included in our 
forthcoming book on Automatic 
Deduction and Theorem Prov- 
ing will be software written in 
GOLDEN COMMON LISP, This 
will give students first-hand 
experience with advanced pro- 
grams written in the standard 
LISP dialect on their own PC? 
Woody Bledsoe, President 
American Association for 
Artificial Intelligence 
Michael Ballantyne 
University of Texas, Austin 

"I'm used to working on a 
Symbolics 3600, yet I am quite 
comfortable moving to the PC 
using GOLDEN COMMON LISP. 
GCLISP is a very respectable 
subset of the COMMON LISP 
dialect . . .In summary: this is 
a superb product It puts state- 
of the -art LISP programming 
technology into the hands of 
anyone who can afford a PC" 
David Touretzky 
Computer Science Department 
Carnegie Mellon University 

"Gold Hill has an enormous 
competitive advantage in the 
Algame. It is located next door 
to MIT } and has direct access to 
the students and faculty of the 
MIT AI Lab. The people at Gold 
Hill have done some highly orig- 
inal thinking about how to dra- 
matically increase the amount 
of computing power available 
to personal computer users." 
Howard Austin, President, 
Knowledge Analysis Inc. 

"There are a lot of people 
eager to get their hands on this 
stuff. I think this will bring AI 
to the masses" 

Patrick H.Winston 
Director of the AI Lab, MIT 
President-elect, American 
Association for Artificial 
Intelligence 



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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 311 



EXPERT TECHNOLOGY 



Some researchers 
predict that memory 
needs of advanced 
expert systems will 
drive development of 
encyclopedic memories. 



sonal computers. Some researchers 
predict that the memory needs of ad- 
vanced expert systems will drive the 
development of encyclopedic memo- 
ries for personal computers. 

Conclusion 

Expert systems can be built in many 
ways, involving rules, networks, 
frames, and combinations thereof, 
with all sorts of variations within these 
categories with respect to knowledge 
representation and control. We could 
not begin to cover all possible ap- 
proaches to building expert systems, 
since new ones are being developed 
almost daily. 

Even if the most efficient approach 
has been ascertained for the domain 
in question, the most cost-effective 
computer resource must still be deter- 
mined. In most cases, approach selec- 
tion at least narrows the choice for 
resources; in some cases, approach 
and resources can be selected to- 
gether. However, this hardly reduces 
the complexity of the choice. To make 
matters worse, computer resources 
are changing as rapidly as the new 
system-building approaches are being 
developed. The best we can hope to 
convey is an awareness of the oppor- 
tunities and complexities involved in 
the development of expert systems. ■ 

REFERENCES 

J. Bennett. IS., and R. S. Englemore. 
"SACON: A Knowledge-Based Consultant 
for Structural Analysis," IJCA, 179, 1979, 
page 47. 

2. Bramer, M. A. 'A Survey and Critical 
Review of Expert Systems Research." In- 
troductory Readings in Expert Systems, D. Michie, 



ed. London and New York: Gordon and 
Breach. 1982, 

3. Chandrasekaran, B.. and Sanjay Mittal. 
"Deep Versus Compiled Knowledge Ap- 
proaches to Diagnostic Problem-Solving." 
International }oumal of Man-Machine Studies, 
#19, 1983, page 425. 

4. Davis, R. "Expert Systems: Where Are 
We 9 and Where Do We Go From Here?" 
A I Magazine, Spring 1982, page 3. 

5. Duda. R.. f. Gaschnig, and P. Hart. 
"Model Design in PROSPECTOR Consul- 
tant System for Mineral Exploration" 
ESMA. 1979, page 153. 

6. Duda. R. Q. and E. H. Shortliffe. "Expert 
Systems Research." Science. April 1983, 
page 261. 

7. Erman. L. D.. P. E. London, and S. F 
Fickas. "The Design and Example Use of 
Hearsay 3." Proceedings of IJCA no. 7. 1981 
page 409. 

8. Feigenbaum. E. A., B. G. Buchanan, and 
I. Lederberg. "On Generality and Problem 
Solving: A Case Study Using the 
DENDRAL Program." Machine intelligence 6 
B. Meltzer and D. Michie eds. New York: 
Edinburgh University Press and Halsted 
Press (Wiley), 1971, page 165, 

9. Forbus. Kenneth D. "Qualitative Process 
Theory." MIT Technical Report 789. MIT Al 
Laboratory, May 1984. 

10. Forgey, C L. "Rete: A Fast Algorithm 
for the Many Pattern/Many Object Match 
Problem." Artificial intelligence. September 
1982. 

11. Hasling, Diane Warner. William 1. 
Clancey, and Glenn Rennels. "Strategic Ex- 
planations for a Diagnostic Consultation 
System." International \ournal of Man-Machine 
Studies, lanuary 1984, page 3. 

12. Hart, P. "Direction for AI in the 80s." 
SIC ART Newsletter. November 1981, page 11. 

13. Hollan. lames. Edwin Hutchins, and L. W«tz- 
man. "Steamer: An Interactive \nspectable 
Simulation-Based Training System'.' A I Magazine, 
Summer 1984, page 15. 

14. Hutchins, Edwin, Terry Roe, and James 
Hollan. "Project STEAMER: Vll. A 
Computer-Based System for Monitoring 
the Boiler Light-Off Procedure for a 
1078-Class Frigate." NPRDC Technical Note 
82-85, August 1982. 

1 5. Kunz, |. C, et al. "A Physiological Rule- 
Based System for Interpreting Pulmonary 
Function Tests" Heuristic Programming 
Project, Memo HPP-78-19, Stanford 
University, 1978. 

16. McDermott, 1. "Rl: A Rule-Based Con- 
figurer of Computer Systems," Computer 
Science Department, Carnegie-Mellon 
University, 1980. 

17. Michaelsen, R. H. "An Expert System 
for Federal Tax Planning" Expert Systems: 



The International journal of Knowledge Engineer- 
ing, October, 1984, page 149. 

18. Michalski, R. S., A, B. Baskin, A. 
Boulanger, R. Reinke, L. Rodewald, M. 
Seyler, K. Spachman, and C Uhrik. "A 
Technical Description of the ADVISE Meta 
Expert System." Department of Computer 
Science, University of Illinois at Urbana- 
Champaign, 1983. 

19. Michalski, R. S., J. Carbonell, and T 
Mitchell, eds. Machine Learning: An Artificial 
Intelligence Approach. Los Altos, CA: Tioga 
Publishing Company, 1983. 

20. Minsky, M. 'A Framework for 
Representing Knowledge." The Psychology of 
Computer Vision, P. Winston, ed. New York: 
McGraw-Hill, 1975, 

21. Nil H. P., andN. Aiello. "AGE (Attempt 
to Generalize): A Knowledge-Based Pro- 
gram for Building Knowledge-Based Pro- 
grams," IJCA. 179, 1979, page 645. 

22. Pople, HE., |. D. Myers, and R. A. 
Miller. "Dialog: A Model of Diagnostic 
Logic for Internal Medicine." IJCA. 175, 
1975, page 848. 

2 3. Reiter, I. AL/X: An Expert System 
Using Plausible Inference." Intelligent 
Terminals Ltd., University of Edinburgh, 
1980. 

24. Schank, R. C. and R. P. Abelson. Scripts, 
Plans. Goals, and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: 
Larrence Erlbaum Associates, 1977. 
2 5. Shapiro. A., and T Niblett. "Automatic 
Induction of Classification Rules for a 
Chess Endgame." Advances in Computer Chess 
3. M. R. B. Clarke, ed. Oxford: Pergamon, 
1982. 

26. Shortliffe, E. H. Computer-Based Medical 
Consultations: MYCIN. New York: American 
Elsevier/North-Holland, 1976. 

27. Stefik. Mark, Daniel G. Bobrow, San- 
jay Mittal, and Lynn Conway. "Knowledge 
Programming in LOOPS: Report on an Ex- 
perimental Course." A I Magazine. Fall 1983. 

28. Stevens, Albert, and Bruce Roberts. 
"Quantitative and Qualitative Simulation 
in Computer Base Training." journal of Com- 
puter Based Instruction, volume 10. numbers 
1 and 2, Summer 1983, page 16. 

29. Swartout, W. R. "A Digitalis Therapy 
Advisor with Explanations." Technical Report 
176. MIT Lab for Computer Science, 
February 1977. 

30. Van Melle, W "A Domain-Independent 
Production Rule System for Consultation 
Programs." IJCA. 179, 1979, page 923, 

31. Waterman. DA., and F Hayes-Roth, 
eds Pattern-Directed Inference Systems. New 
York: Academic Press, 1978. 

32. Whalen, Thomas, and Brian Schott. 
"Issues in Fuzzy Production Systems." In- 
ternational journal of Man-Machine Studies, #19, 
1983, page 57. 



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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 



INSIDE AN 
EXPERT SYSTEM 

by Beverly A. Thompson and William A. Thompson 



From index cards to Pascal program 



AN EXPERT SYSTEM will allow anyone with some exper- 
tise to create an outline of the process used to solve a 
particular problem. This outline can be used to generate 
a series of questions that lead a nonexpert through the 
solution of similar problems. Many different techniques 
are used to represent an outline of expert knowledge. One 
method currently employed is the use of IF. . .THEN 
sentences, called rules, to make factual statements about 
the problem area. 

In this article we will describe one way that an expert 
system can use a set of rules to conduct a consultation 
session. We will describe the mechanics of how an expert 
system operates by creating a "cardboard inference 
engine," and we'll then examine some of the programming 
considerations for translating the cardboard system into 
Pascal. 

Before we begin describing how rules are used in an 
expert system, we should get a clearer idea of where the 
rules come from and the structure that they represent. 
Imagine for a moment that you are an expert in the field 
of botany, and you have just received a phone call from 
a woman who wants your help in identifying the botanical 
family of a plant that she has found. Since you can't see 
the specimen, you must rely on information supplied by 
the caller. However, since she is not an expert, it is very 
difficult for her to know what information will help you 
to make the identification. You will have to ask questions 
in order to get the caller to supply the facts you need to 
solve the problem. 

Let's assume that you have asked enough questions to 
determine that the plant in question is a tree that belongs 
to the botanical class gymnosperm. Figure 1 shows one 



possible decision procedure that can complete the pos- 
sibilities in this case. In table 1, rules 1 through 4, you can 
see how the diagram shown in figure 1 is represented as 
rules using IF. . .THEN statements. The set of rules in table 
1 and the information in table 2 comprise an incomplete 
botanical knowledge base that we will use to answer ques- 
tions about plant type (herb, vine, shrub, or tree), class 
of tree (angiosperm or gymnosperm), and family of gym- 
nosperm (cypress, bald cypress, or pine). Because we are 
using an incomplete knowledge base, we can ask well- 
formed questions that the system cannot answer (e.g., 
family membership of a vine). Nonetheless, we believe that 
our simple example will give you some insight into what 
an expert system is and how it works. 

The Knowledge Base 

It is important to understand that knowledge is not a ran- 
dom collection of facts but a collection of facts related 
by some overall structure. In the example above, the 
IF. . .THEN rules provide that structure. The collection of 
facts used to capture all of the information in a problem 
area is called the knowledge base. In the system we will 
present, the knowledge base consists of three main ele- 
ments—rules, prompts, and translations. 

Each rule in table 1 is made up of a conditional part, 
which is preceded by the word "IF' and a conclusion part, 

{continued) 
Beverly and William Thompson (RD 2, Box 430, Nassau. NY 
1 2 1 2 3) are the founders of MicroExpert Systems, a company specializ- 
ing in artificial-intelligence tools for microcomputers. \n addition to 
writing the MicroExpert System program, they are writing a book 
on expert systems that will be available soon. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 315 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



which is preceded by the word "THEN." Each clause within 
these parts is made up of an attribute which is a keyword 
or phrase that is some quality about which we are seek- 
ing information; a value, which is assigned to an attribute 
either as a response to a question or a conclusion to a 
rule; and a predicate (the word "IS" in our system), which 
relates the two, 

Since one of the tasks of the system is to ask the caller 
to supply information about some of the attributes, the 
questions to be asked (the prompts) will have to be stored 
in the knowledge base. The attributes TYPE, FAMILY, and 
CLASS do not have questions associated with them 
because the user is never expected to supply any infor- 
mation about them. 

Another item associated with the attribute is the transla- 
tion. This is used to expand the keyword to make the rules 
more readable. There are two different ways to form trans- 
lations. The following example illustrates the first of these; 

Attribute: STEM 

Translation: The stem of the plant 

Attribute: TYPE 

Translation: The type of the plant 

Rule without translation: IF STEM IS GREEN THEN TYPE IS 

HERB. 

Rule with translation: If the stem of the plant is green, then 

the type of the plant is herb. 

When forming a translation of this type, you must keep 
in mind that whatever phrase is chosen will be directly 
substituted for the attribute. The predicate and value will 
remain exactly as they appear in the untranslated rule. 
If the method above is used when the value of an attri- 
bute is YES or NO, the resulting phrase is very unnatural. 
We can get around this problem as follows: 

Attribute: BROAD AND FLAT 

Translation: The shape of the leaves is /not/ broad and flat 

Rule without translation: IF TYPE IS TREE AND BROAD AND 



FLAT IS YES THEN CLASS IS ANGIOSPERM. 
Rule with translation: If the type of plant is tree and the shape 
of the leaves is broad and flat, then the class of the tree 
is angiosperm. 

If the value had been NO, the clause would have read "the 
shape of the leaves is not broad and flat." Since the 
predicate and value are already contained in the transla- 
tion, they are not restated after the translation. 

The Cardboard Inference Engine 

Now that we have described all of the items in the 
knowledge base, we are ready to construct our cardboard 
inference engine. To make it easy to manipulate the in- 
dividual items in the knowledge base, let's think of each 
rule as being placed on a separate index card. Since both 
prompts and translations are associated with the in- 
dividual attributes, we can also make an index card for 
each attribute that lists the keyword, the translation, and 
the prompt, if there is one. The rules in our knowledge 
base are shown in table 1; the complete set of attribute 
cards is shown in table 2. At this point it may be helpful 
to actually make this set of cards. The step numbers listed 
in the description that follows refer to the sample session 
shown in table 3. 

The Goal Stack 

With our knowledge base completed we can use our cards 
to guide us through a consultation. The first step in any 
consultation is to choose a goal for the session (step 1). 
In this example we will make FAMILY the final goal of our 
consultation. To begin we should set aside the attribute 
card for FAMILY on a separate pile called the goal stack. 
The attribute that appears on the top of the goal stack 
is called the current goal. 

The Context Stack 

As we proceed in the consultation, we must keep track 
of all the facts that we discover. When an attribute is as- 



The class of 
the tree is 
gymnosperm 



Is the leaf y/ 

shape needlelike 
or scalelike ? \ 



scalelike ; 



The family of the 
. plant is cypress. 



What kind of 
needlelike -^ pattern do the y 

needles form N 
on the branch 7 



random 



two 

even 

lines 



The family of the 
the plant is pine 



Is there 
a silver 
band under * 
the needle 9 



yes : 



The family of 
l> the plant is 
bald cypress 



The family of 
i> the plant is 
pine. 



Figure I: A flow diagram for determining the family of a gymnosperm tree. 



316 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



Table 1: The rules for the sample botany expert system. 


1 


IF 


CLASS IS GYMNOSPERM 




AND 


LEAF SHAPE IS SCALELIKE 




THEN 


FAMILY IS CYPRESS , 


2 


IF 


CLASS IS GYMNOSPERM 




AND 


LEAF SHAPE IS NEEDLELIKE 




AND 


PATTERN IS RANDOM 




THEN 


FAMILY IS PINE . 


3 


IF 


CLASS IS GYMNOSPERM 




AND 


LEAF SHAPE IS NEEDLELIKE 




AND 


PATTERN IS 2 EVEN LINES 




AND 


SILVERY BAND IS YES 




THEN 


FAMILY IS PINE . 


4 


IF 


CLASS IS GYMNOSPERM 




AND 


LEAF SHAPE IS NEEDLELIKE 




AND 


PATTERN IS 2 EVEN LINES 




AND 


SILVERY BAND IS NO 




THEN 


FAMILY IS BALD CYPRESS 


5 


IF 


TYPE IS TREE 




AND 


BROAD AND FLAT IS YES 




THEN 


CLASS IS ANGIOSPERM . 


6 


IF 


TYPE IS TREE 




AND 


BROAD AND FLAT IS NO 




THEN 


CLASS IS GYMNOSPERM . 


7 


IF 


STEM IS GREEN 




THEN 


TYPE IS HERB . 


8 


IF 


STEM IS WOODY 




AND 


POSITION IS CREEPING 




THEN 


TYPE IS VINE . 


9 


IF 


STEM IS WOODY 




AND 


POSITION IS UPRIGHT 




AND 


ONE MAIN TRUNK IS YES 




THEN 


TYPE IS TREE . 


10 


IF 


STEM IS WOODY 




AND 


POSITION IS UPRIGHT 




AND 


ONE MAIN TRUNK IS NO 




THEN 


TYPE IS SHRUB . 



Table 2: The set of attribute cards for the botany expert 
system. The attributes are in capital letters, followed by 

their translations and the appropriate prompt. 

CARD 1 STEM 

the stem of the plant 

Is the stem of the plant woody or green? 
CARD 2 POSITION 

the position of the stem 

Is the position of the stem upright or creeping ? 
CARD 3 ONE MAIN TRUNK 

the plant does /not/ have one main trunk. 

Does the plant have one main trunk ? 
CARD 4 TYPE OF PLANT 

The type of plant 

CARD 5 BROAD AND FLAT 

the shape of the leaves is /not/ broad and flat 
Is the shape of the leaves broad and flat ? 

CARD 6 CLASS 

The class of the tree 

CARD 7 LEAF SHAPE 

the leaf shape 

Is the leaf shape needlelike or scalelike ? 
CARD 8 NEEDLE PATTERN 

the pattern the needles form along the branch 

Is the pattern that the needles form along the 
branch a random one or are the needles in 2 
even lines ? 
CARD 9 SILVER BANDS 

there is /not/ a silver band under each needle 

Is there a silver band under each needle 9 
CARD 10 FAMILY 

the family of the plant 



signed a value we will take its attribute card and place 
it on a pile called the context stack. Since we must also 
save the value that is assigned to the attribute, a card con- 
taining the value of the attribute must be placed along 
with the attribute card. We will also need a discard pile 
for rules that we want to remove from the knowledge base. 
We are now ready to see how these pieces can be put 
together to form an inference engine. An inference engine 
is a method of systematically choosing goals, evaluating 
rules, and interacting with the user in order to obtain a 
value for the final goal. 

Choosing a Rule to Evaluate 

First try to find a rule card that gives some information 
about the current goal attribute in its conclusion part (the 
statements following the word "THEN" in the rule). This 
process of searching through the conclusions of rules to 
solve goals is referred to as backward chaining (also called 



goal-driven inference or consequent reasoning). If you find 
a rule that contains the attributes of the current goal in 
its conclusion, you can go on to "Evaluating the Rule"; 
otherwise, you will have to resort to the procedure de- 
scribed in the section "Asking the Caller for Information." 

Evaluating the Rule 

Once we have chosen a rule to evaluate we must com- 
pare the statements in the condition part of the rule, one 
by one, with the facts that are already known. These facts 
are contained on the context stack. As we make this com- 
parison we will discover that one of three possibilities can 
occur: 

I . Evaluating an unknown rule: The value of a rule is unknown 
when one or more condition clauses in the current rule 
do not appear on the context stack (as with rule I in step 

[continued] 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 317 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



2 of our example shown in table 3). Before this rule can 
be successfully evaluated the unknown information must 
be discovered, so the attribute card listing the first 
unknown attribute (CLASS in our example) will be placed 
on the goal list along with the rule card containing the 
unknown rule. The goals that go on the goal list after the 
final goal are sometimes referred to as subgoals. Return 
to "Choosing a Rule to Evaluate" and try to find a rule 
with CLASS in its conclusion, 

2. Evaluating a false rule: A rule is false when one of the state- 
ments on the card has a clause that is contradicted by 
a fact on the context stack (in step 6, rule 7 has the value 
GREEN for the attribute STEM, which was contradicted 
by the user input). In this case, the current rule card is 
placed on the discard pile, and you must return to "Choos- 
ing a Rule to Evaluate." 

3. Evaluating true rules: A rule is said to be true when each 
of the clauses in the condition part of the rule matches 
an item on the context stack (rule 9 was established as 
true in step 12). When all of the clauses in the condition 
part are true, the statements in the conclusion part must 
also be true. Since this rule was chosen to be evaluated 
because it contained the current goal as its conclusion, 
you should remove the current goal from the top of the 
goal stack and place it on the context list. The rule card 
left behind on the goal stack (rule 5 in our example) should 
be returned to the top of the rule card pile so it can be 
reevaluated. The rule card we have just evaluated (rule 9) 
is kept with the attribute card on the context list to show 
the value of the attribute and how it was reached. This 
rule card will also be used to answer questions that the 
caller may later ask about this conclusion. If there are no 
other goals on the goal stack, the problem has been 



solved. If there are goals remaining, return to "Choosing 
a Rule to Evaluate." 

Asking the Caller for Information 

In the event that no rule can be found that can provide 
information about the current goal, you must turn to the 
caller to help provide the necessary information (in step 
5, we ask the caller for information because none of the 
rules have STEM in their conclusion). This is where we 
make use of the prompts that have been placed on the 
attribute cards. Unfortunately, if no prompt appears on 
the card, it means that the caller can provide no informa- 
tion about the attribute in question. In this case, we have 
reached a dead end and will have to end the consulta- 
tion without finding a solution to the problem. If this oc- 
curs, there is either some problem with our rules or this 
branch of the knowledge base was left unresolved. 

When a prompt does appear on the current goal card, 
we use it to question the caller. Once the caller has sup- 
plied the missing information, we can remove the current 
goal card from the goal stack and place it on the context 
stack. If there is a rule card with this goal, it should be 
placed on the top of the pile of rule cards. You will also 
have to make a card that lists the value and place it on 
the context stack with the attribute card. Once this has 
been done we can return to "Choosing a Rule to Evaluate." 

Why and How 

In the course of a consultation it is not uncommon for 
the caller to want to know why you are asking a certain 
question. In table 3, step 13, we were unable to find a rule 
that gave any information about BROAD AND FLAT, so 

[continued) 



Table 3: A 


step-by-step illustration of a cardboard-inference- 


engine 


consultation, showing stack volatilities. 




step 


evaluate 


value 


response 


goal stack 




context stack 




discard 




rule* 




of rule 


to prompt 


attribute r 


ule# 


attribute 


value 


rule# 


rule# 


1 










FAMILY 












2 


1 




unknown 




CLASS 


1 










3 


5 




unknown 




TYPE 


5 










4 


7 




unknown 




STEM 


7 










5 


no 






WOODY 


TYPE 


5 


STEM 


WOODY 






6 


7 




false 














7 


7 


8 




unknown 




POSITION 


8 










8 


no 






UPRIGHT 


TYPE 


5 


POSITION 


UPRIGHT 






9 


8 




false 














8 


10 


9 




unknown 




MAIN TRUNK 


9 










11 


no 






YES 


TYPE 


5 


MAIN TRUNK 


YES 






12 


9 




true 




CLASS 


1 


TYPE 


TREE 


9 




13 


5 




unknown 




BROAD+FLAT 


5 










14 


no 






NO 


CLASS 


1 


BROAD + FLAT 


NO 






15 


5 




false 














5 


16 


6 




true 




FAMILY 




CLASS 


GYMNOSPERM 


6 




17 


1 




unknown 




LEAF SHAPE 


1 










18 


no 






SCALELIKE 


FAMILY 




LEAF SHAPE 


SCALELIKE 






19 


1 




true 








FAMILY 


CYPRESS 


1 





318 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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Inquiry 343 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 319 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



we have just asked the caller the prompt for BROAD AND 
FLAT. Before answering, the caller asks why we have asked 
this particular question. To find the reason we need look 
no further than the top rule on the goal stack. The reason 
we are trying to find a value for BROAD AND FLAT is to 
get one of the pieces of information needed to solve the 
goal CLASS in rule 5. By fitting the information from the 
goal stack into the following form we will answer the ques- 
tion "Why?": 

We are trying to find a value for the class of the tree. 
We already know that the type of the plant is tree. 
1/ we can show that the leaf shape is not broad and flat 
then we will know that the class of the tree is gymnosperm. 

Notice that we have substituted the translation for each 
attribute to make the information more readable 

If the caller now wants to know "Why is CLASS impor- 
tant?" the process is repeated, moving back another item 
in the goal stack. This can continue until all of the subgoals 
on the stack are exhausted. 

Returning to the example above, the caller may now be 
satisfied with why you have asked about BROAD AND 
FLAT but may ask. "How do you know that the type of 
the plant is tree?" This question can be answered by find- 



ing where that attribute appears on the context stack. If 
there is a rule card with the attribute card, the rule on 
that card caused the value to be placed on the context 
stack. To answer the question, we would use the informa- 
tion in the rule to form our response: 

the type of the plant is tree 

was proven using rule 9 

This rule states that: 
If the stem of the plant is woody 
and the position of the stem is upright 
and the plant does have one main trunk 
then the type of the plant is tree. 

When no rule card is placed with the attribute card on 
the context stack, we can inform the caller that he or she 
must have supplied the fact in response to a prompt. 

Allowing a caller to interrupt a consultation to ask how 
and why makes the process more understandable and 
more educational to both consultant and caller. 

Now that we have made a mechanical model that con- 
tains all of the pieces of our expert system, it is a fairly 
straightforward task to lay out program structures to 
automate the process. We can now introduce some Pascal 

[continued) 



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Inquiry 272 



Inquiry 18 



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Inquiry 1 66 



APRIL I985 • BYTE 321 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



structures to aid in the construction of an expert system. 

Conceptually, we can separate the knowledge-base rules 
and attributes from the inference engine, which employs 
the knowledge base to reach conclusions. Of course, we 
could hard-wire the knowledge base into the expert-system 
program, but then the program would be inflexible. If we 
wanted to expand the knowledge base to include family- 
of-vines data or to create a different expert system for in- 
sect identification, we would have to rewrite the program. 
Alternatively we can make it one of the program's duties 
to read the rules, prompts, and translations from a file and 
transform them into a form that can be operated on by 
the inference engine. This is the approach we will take. 
The translation is accomplished by means of a parser. A 
parser is a routine that reads statements in a given 
language and determines whether the statements are legal 
in that language. As a by-product of its activity, a parser 
may also produce a transformed representation of the 
statement for use by other parts of the program. The 
parser we will discuss is available for downloading from 
BYTEnet Listings (telephone: (603) 924-9820). 

One of the decisions that must be made early in the 
design of an expert system is the method of entry and 
storage for the knowledge base. One convenient method 
is the use of a standard text editor to enter and store the 
rules, prompts, and translations as ASCII (American Stan- 
dard Code for Information Interchange) text files. This can 
lead to difficulties in maintaining the integrity of the 
knowledge base, but it greatly simplifies the overall pro- 
gram design, since it will not be necessary to write any 
data-entry routines. In our text file, the rules should have 
the same form as on our index cards. 

The Parser 

The language the parser recognizes is described by a 
grammar. A grammar is a set of definitions that specify 
how the basic symbols of the language called tokens, may 
be legally combined. In this case, a token is any string of 
characters surrounded by blanks. We can think of the rules, 
prompts, and translations as statements in a rule language. 



The first step in programming a parser is to completely 
describe the language that the parser will recognize. The 
Backus-Naur diagram in table 4 describes the grammar 
that the program must recognize. Backus-Naur form (BNF) 
is a shorthand for describing syntax. It uses two special 
symbols; "::»" (read as "is defined to be") and " " (read 
as "or"). For example, the first line of table 4, 

sentence ::= rule | prompt | translation 

is read "a sentence is defined to be a rule, a prompt, or 
a translation." Names enclosed in quotes must appear 
exactly as shown. Other symbols are syntactical categories 
and are defined in the grammar. The phrase 

rule ::= rule number 'IF' condition THEN' conclusion V 

tells us that a rule is made up of a rule number followed 
by the keyword "IF" This is followed by a condition (to 
be defined elsewhere in the grammar), the word "THEN," 
and a conclusion. Finally a "." terminates the rule. The 
definition of a condition, 

condition ::= clause | clause AND' condition 

tells us that a condition is made up of a clause or a series 
of clauses connected by the word "AND." A definition such 
as this is called right-recursive, since it contains the ob- 
ject being defined on the right-hand end of the definition. 
The recursion in such a definition doesn't necessarily ter- 
minate. A condition could legally consist of an infinite 
number of clauses. Obviously, any program trying to parse 
such an object would run into problems of time and mem- 
ory constraints. The BNF gives a good theoretical defini- 
tion of the grammar but doesn't necessarily contain in- 
formation about the practical limitations imposed by im- 
plementing the grammar on a real computer. 

The advantage of using the BNF definition is that it is 
relatively straightforward to implement a parser for a 
grammar that has been defined in this manner. The defini- 
tion provides a guide for the top-down design of the pro- 
gram. You start by assuming the existence of a routine, 

[continued) 



Table 4: The grammar for the expert system's rules, prompts, and translations expressed in BNF. 

sentence ::= rule | prompt | translation 

rule ::= rule_no 'IF' condition THEN' conclusion '.' 

rule no ::= digit | digit rule no 

condition ::= clause | clause 'AND' condition 

clause ::= attribute predicate value 

attribute ::= token | token attribute 

predicate :: = 'IS' 

value ::= token | token value 

digit ::= '0' . . '9' 

token :: = (any string, up to 30 characters, surrounded by blanks) 

prompt ::= '©PROMPT attribute end_of line text end_of line '@' 

end_of_line ::= (<RET> for UCSD, <RETxLF> for TURBO) 

text :: - (any string, up to 80 characters) 

translation ::= '©TRANS' attribute end of. line text end of line '@ 



(max 30 characters) 
(max 30 characters) 



322 B YTE • APRIL 1985 




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INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



Many of the procedures that will 
make up the parser are recursive 
because their definitions are 
recursive. This technique is called 
recursive-descent parsing. 

which we will call scant, that will read tokens from the in- 
put file. 

To write the parser, start at the first line of the grammar 
and write a procedure that can accept a token from a file 
and decide if it is the starting token of rule, a prompt, or 
a translation, read the next token, and call the appropriate 
routine to analyze the rest of the sentence The procedure 
sentence in the BYTEnet program does that. The pro- 
cedure rule in the same program expects to be called with 
the token having the value "IF 1 If this is true it calls con- 
dition; if not, it calls the error routine and exits. This pro- 
cess continues, following the BNF, until we get to the pro- 
cedures attribute, predicate, and value, which will save the 
items they recognize for later use. 

The definition of value uses "AND" as a terminating 
token, so that attempting to use values such as "hard and 
woody" will cause the parser to terminate in an error. We 
could resolve this problem by modifying the definition of 
rule in the grammar to use some other keyword in place 
of "AND" or by building some sort of backtracking into 
the parser. Backtracking would allow the parser to back 
up to the point in a sentence that caused an error and 
try an alternate possibility. 

All the procedures making up the parser must cooperate 
by the convention that when they return they will have 
scanned past all the tokens that they recognize, leaving 
the first token in the next phrase in the global variable 
called token. 

Many of the procedures that will make up the parser, 
such as condition and attribute, are recursive because their 
definitions are recursive. This type of top-down recursive 
technique is called recursive-descent parsing. 

Using this grammar we can mix rules, prompts, and 
translations together in one file. The rules illustrated in 
table 1 can be entered as shown. The prompts and transla- 
tions in table 2 must be changed in order to match the 
grammar. For example: 

©trans stem © 
The stem of the plant 

© 

©prompt stem @ 

Is the stem of the plant woody or green ? 



[continued] 



324 BYTE* APRIL 198=i 



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INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



To change the kind of rules recognized by the program, 
modify the grammar and then, using the new grammar 
as a guide rewrite the routines that process the grammar. 

A cross-reference program that uses the parser routines 
described in this article can be downloaded from BYTEnet. 
The source code is available in a UCSD or Apple Pascal 
version and a TUrbo Pascal version. The set of rules used 
in this article is also available as a text file as well as a 
more complete knowledge base that identifies the genera 
of conifers in the northeast U.S. The cross-reference pro- 
gram will read a knowledge base from a text file and pro- 
duce an alphabetized list of the attributes along with their 
translations, prompts, and values. The numbers of the 
rules containing each value will also be displayed. 

While the cross-reference program represents about 16K 
bytes of source code, it is only part of an expert system. 
In the rest of this article, we will present the specifications 
for a full-blown program to implement the cardboard in- 
ference engine in Pascal. The specifications are based on 
a program we wrote called MicroExpert System, which is 
available on disk from McGraw-Hill for IBM and Apple 
computers for $39.95. The package includes full documen- 
tation and source code and is a straightforward realiza- 
tion of the complete cardboard inference engine. (Micro- 
Expert is a trademark of MicroExpert Systems.) The cross- 
reference program on BYTEnet can be used with the 
MicroExpert program without modification. 

Data Structures 

Parsing ensures that the rules in the file are well formed, 
but this is only part of an expert system. The major func- 
tion of the system is to interpret the rules and find a value 



Listing I : Pascal code to describe an item and related 
data types. 

TYPE 
string80 ■ stnng[80] , 

word ■ st ring [word size] ; 

counter = . . maxint ; 
item_Jype = (cond.concld) ; 

item ptr = "item ; 

string ptr = "string rec ; 

string_rec = RECORD 

info : stnng80 ; 

next line : string ptr ; 

END ; 
item = RECORD 

next : item ptr ; 

attr : word ; 
CASE boolean OF 
TRUE : ( val : word ; 

kind : item type ; 

rule no : counter ) ; 

FALSE : ( prompt ptr : string ptr ; 

trans ptr : string ptr ; 

val ptr : item ptr) ; 

END ; 



for the goal of the consultation. The rest of the program 
must be designed to support this function. 

Along with parsing the rules, the program must allocate 
storage for prompts, translations, and rules. For rules it 
will be necessary not only to store attributes and values 
but also to represent the overall structure of the rules in 
a compact manner. Prompt and translation strings must 
be stored in a way that will allow them to be associated 
easily with their respective attributes. 

There are numerous methods of accomplishing this as- 
sociation. In our system, MicroExpert, we used linked lists 
of records called items to store most of the data elements 
necessary for the operation of the inference engine This 
is slightly wasteful of storage, but it simplifies the overall 
program design. Listing 1 shows an item as it would be 
defined in Pascal. 

There are two basic kinds of items. The rule item con- 
tains the attribute, the value, the rule number, and the kind 
of item (condition or conclusion). Since in the rule descrip- 
tion we have allowed only one kind of predicate, "IS," we 
have not included the predicate in the item. For each 
clause in the rule, an item is created. The items making 
up the clauses in a rule are linked together by means of 
a pointer. Finally another pointer is inserted into an ar- 
ray that points to the first item in the rule. This structure 
is represented in figure 2. Each rule is thus stored in 
memory as a pair of linked lists, one for the condition and 
one for the conclusion of the rule 

Prompts and translations are also stored by means of 
a linked-list organization. When the parser reading the 
knowledge-base file encounters a prompt or translation, 
an item is created for the attribute if one does not already 
exist. The item is inserted into a linked list of attribute 
items and, as prompt and translation lines are read, they 
are also linked together and pointed to by fields in the 
attribute list. This structure is diagramed in figure 3. 

Linked lists are a useful programming mechanism for 
manipulating symbolic structures such as rules. Unfor- 
tunately, languages like Pascal provide few intrinsic 
routines for handling lists. In order to implement an ex- 
pert system in Pascal, routines for manipulating lists and 
managing storage must be designed. Pascal provides in- 
trinsic procedures for manipulating dynamic storage. Un- 
fortunately, these routines vary somewhat among different 
versions of Pascal. Most versions provide a new procedure 
to allocate storage, but the method of releasing dynamic 
data when it is no longer needed differs slightly among 
the versions of Pascal that we wished to use. 

Since we wanted MicroExpert to run under Apple and 
TUrbo Pascal with only minor modifications, we chose not 
to use the Pascal intrinsic dispose, which is not included 
in the Apple version. Instead we maintain another list of 
items. When a request is made for a new item, the pro- 
gram first checks this list. If the list is empty, it calls the 
intrinsic function new to get space for the item. If the list 
is not empty, the top item of the list is returned and the 

[continued) 



326 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



Figure 2: The linked-list representation of rule 8. 







COND 


CONCLD 






ITEMS 
































7 

8 






, 






* NIL 






STEM 


POSITION 








WOODY 


CREEPING 


COND 


COND 






















8 


8 


9 
























1 - 


NIL 












TYPE 




VINE 


CONCLD 


8 



















ITEMS 



-* •- 



STEM 



POSITION 



-♦ IS THE POSITION OF THE STEM UPRIGHT OR CREEPING? 



• — * NIL 



-+> THE POSITION OF THE STEM 



NIL 



Figure 3: The linkages between the attribute list and the prompt and translation lists are illustrated for the POSITION attribute. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 327 



INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



list pointer is set to point to the next item on the list. 
Similarly, an item can be released by making its next 
pointer point to the top of the list and the list pointer point 
to the just-released item. 

Several other list-handling routines will also be neces- 
sary. A routine must be included to check to see if a par- 
ticular attribute is on a given list and, if found, return a 
pointer to the location on the list. A routine to create a 
new item, put it on the front of a list, and fill in values 
for the fields in the item record will be needed. Similar 
routines will be needed to insert items at the end of a 
list and to insert an item in a list in alphabetical order. 

Besides using these routines, the program builds several 
other lists that correspond to structures described in the 
cardboard inference engine. We must build a goal list of 
items that contains the main goal and subgoals generated 
by the inference engine. The context is also a linked list 
of items that is used to keep track of facts derived during 
processing. Although both of these structures were 



Table 5: Pseudocode for the inference-engine procedure. 

BEGIN 
put the final goal on the goal stack, 
done : = false. 
WHILE NOT done DO 
IF a rule can be found to evaluate 
THEN 
CASE value of rule OF 
true : BEGIN 

put attribute card from goal stack 
and the rule card being evaluated 
on the context stack. 
IF there was a rule card with the goal 
put it on top of the pile of rule 
cards. 
IF the goal stack is empty 
THEN done := true. 
END. 
false : put the rule card on the discard pile, 

unknown : put the first unknown attribute on the 
goal stack along with the rule card. 
END. 
ELSE 
IF there is a prompt associated with current goal 
THEN 
BEGIN 
ask prompt. 

put answer on context stack along with goal 
card. 

IF there was a rule card with the goal card 
place the rule card on top of the rule pile. 
END. 
ELSE done := true. 
IF final goal is on context stack 
THEN the answer is the value associated with the final 

goal attribute 
ELSE no answer could be found. 
END. 



previously referred to as stacks, we have implemented 
them as linked lists. Since a stack is just a linked list that 
is always accessed at its first element, we will use the terms 
"list" and "stack" interchangeably. 

In the description of the cardboard inference engine we 
mentioned a discard pile upon which rules were placed 
when they were no longer active. In the program, it is con- 
venient to use an array of Booleans to perform the same 
function. Each element is initially set to the value TRUE. 
As the rule becomes inactive by being discovered to be 
true or false depending upon the current context, the cor- 
responding element in the active-rule array is set to 
FALSE. 

The Inference Engine 

The inference engine can be implemented by following 
the pseudocode of table 5. This is illustrated by routine 
infer, shown in listing 2, which begins by calling 

get main goal to ask the user for the final goal of the 

consultation. It stores this in the global variable 

main goal and also creates an item containing 

main goal and puts it on the goal list. 

The program then begins to loop until the Boolean 
variable done becomes TRUE. It first uses the Boolean 

function found rule to determine if a rule is available to 

be evaluated. This function implements the backward- 
chaining feature of the program and works by searching 
the conclusion parts of each active rule to see if there is 
a match for the goal on the top of the goal stack. If it finds 
a match, the function returns a value of TRUE and a 
pointer to the item in the rule that gave the match. 

If a rule containing the current goal could be found, the 

function rule value is called to determine the logical 

value of the rule with respect to the current state of the 
context. MicroExpert uses a tri-valued logic. A rule can 
be determined to be true false, or unknown. A rule can 
be true, symbolized by T in the listing, if all its conditions 
match items on the context list. A rule is false, symbolized 
by R if any attribute has a different value in the rule's con- 
dition part than it has on the context. Finally, a rule is said 
to be unknown, symbolically U if a value cannot be found 
on the context for one of the attributes in the rule's con- 
dition. The function also returns a pointer to the context 
item that caused the rule to be evaluated as T F, or U. 

If the value returned by rule value is F, the rule is 

marked as inactive by setting the corresponding element 

of active rule to FALSE. If the value returned is U, the 

attribute of the first item in the rule whose value could 
not be determined is put on the front of the goal list. 

If the value returned is T true rule is called to put the 

rule's conclusions on the context; true rule also removes 

the top item from goal list and sets the rule's element 

to FALSE in the active rule table. The procedure also 

checks to see if the goal list is empty, setting the done 

indicator to TRUE if it is. 

If no rule can be found by found rule, the program calls 

{continued) 



328 B YTE • APRIL 1985 




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INSIDE AN EXPERT SYSTEM 



Listing 2: The procedure infer is a Pascal realization of 
the pseudocode in table 8. 

PROCEDURE infer ; 
BEGIN 

get main goal ; 

done := false ; 
WHILE NOT done DO 

IF found rule(ptr) 

THEN 

CASE rule value(ptr'\rule_no, reason) OF 

T : true rule ; 

F : active rule[ptr".rule no] := FALSE ; 

U : put on goal(reason) ; 

END 
ELSE 

IF found prompt(attr list.prmpt ptr) 

THEN 
BEGIN 

why ptr := goal list ; 

get answer ; 

END 
ELSE done := TRUE ; 
what ; 

IF NOT on list(main goal .context, ptr) 

THEN writeln('No value could be found for '.main goal) 

END ; (* infer *) 



the function found prompt to search the attribute list for 

a question to ask the user in order to get a value for the 
goal. The function returns a value of TRUE and a pointer 
to the matching element in the attribute list if the attribute 
has a prompt associated with it. 

If a prompt cannot be found, the done indicator is set 
to TRUE and the loop terminates. This usually indicates 
some kind of inconsistency in the rule base, and the in- 
terpreter will terminate without finding a value for the main 

goal. If a prompt was returned, get answer is called to 

display the prompt and get a value for the goal attribute 
from the user. 

The program continues in this manner, searching for 
rules to evaluate and, when necessary, asking the user for 
information, until either the goal list is exhausted or no 
prompt can be found. The program then calls what to print 
out the contents of the context and finally checks the con- 
text list and prints a message if the main goal is not on 
the context. 

Implementing Why and How 

In response to the user query "why," the program prints 

out the goal pointed to by why ptr, which infer initially 

set to point to the current goal. It also prints the translated 
rule that caused the goal to be placed on the goal list. 
The rule number for this rule was stored in the goal item 

when the item was created by put on goal; why ptr 

is then updated to point to the next goal on the list, so 
that successive responses of "why" will print the contents 

of goal list and the rules examined by the system in 

establishing the goals. 



When a rule is printed, each clause is given a number, 
and an item for the clause is added to a list. This list is 
used in conjunction with the response "how." The user 
may respond to the prompt by typing "how" followed by 
a number. The number is the number of a line printed 
in response to the last "why." 

For example the phrase "how 3" is interpreted as "How 
was or can the phrase on line 3 be proven?" In response 
to this phrase, the program searches the context list for 
a match for the attribute of the phrase in question. If a 
match is found, the value in the phrase is compared to 
the corresponding value on the context. If these values 
match, the program prints the rule that placed the item 
on the context. If this rule number is 0, the program prints 
that the phrase was proven by user input. 

Not finding the attribute from the phrase on the con- 
text indicates the logical value of the phrase has not yet 
been determined. In this case, the conclusion parts of the 
rules are searched for a match for the attribute in the 
phrase. If a match is found, the rule number of the match- 
ing rule is printed. If no match can be found, a message 
is printed indicating that the phrase can be determined 
only by user input. 

Variations on a Theme 

The system we have described and our MicroExpert pro- 
gram are both designed for people who want to experi- 
ment with expert systems. What we have tried to provide 
is the bare bones of an expert system, with enough 
modularity and openness of design to encourage modifi- 
cation and experimentation. As a conclusion to our arti- 
cle, we would like to suggest some possible directions for 
variation in the design that we have presented. 

As we mentioned, the structure of inference on the card- 
board system is backward chaining. An equally valid 
method of inference is the forward-chaining or data-driven 
engine. In this method, at any point during the consulta- 
tion, the system searches the condition parts of the rules 
for any rule that may be true and performs their conclu- 
sion part. This adds new information to the context, and 
the process is repeated. 

Methods can also be designed that are combinations 
of the two types of inference. As described, we put only 
the conclusion of the current rule on the context, i.e., the 
rule that produced the current goal. Finding a value for 
this goal may cause other rules to become true, but the 
system will ignore them. A relatively simple modification 
would be to search the rule base for all rules that have 
the current goal in their conditions and evaluate them. 
If any of these rules add items to the context, repeat the 
process until no new items are added. 

Another useful modification to the inference engine 
would be the inclusion of new predicates such as "IS NOT" 
and numerical operators such as " + ," "-," "*," and "/." 
These predicates would allow more complex relationships 
among attributes but will also increase the complexity of 
the function that evaluates the rules. ■ 



330 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Okay, okay, okay. If you're going to insist on 
specifics, we can tell you outright that The 
Shoebox Accountant retails for $395. We 
realize we can probably disclose this detail 
without appearing too pretentious, simply not 
mentioning that for this incredibly marketable 
price, The Shoebox Accountant offers a totally 
integrated small business accounting system, 
complete with tutorial, queuing files, and 
CYMA's powerful reporting capabilities, and 
capsulizes the complete system on a single 
diskette. After all, as our professional peers, 
you're entitled to a little inside information. 
But you know us: subtlety is our hallmark. 



Nice Box. 

Fully Integrated. 

$395. 



N 




The Shoebox Accountant:™ A complete accounting system for small business. 2160 East Brown Road, Mesa, Arizona 85203. 1-800-292-2962 CYMA 

Inquiry 102 for Dealers. Inquiry 103 for End Users. 



McGRAW-HILL 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 331 



BUY HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE AT WHOLESALE + 8%, 
AND GET 1 4-30 DAY SOFTWARE RENTALS*. . . 

In just the last few months, The NETWORK has Listed below are just a few of the over 20,000 products available 
saved its members more than $24,000,000 and at our EVERYDAY LOW PRICES! All software below is priced in 
processed over 100,000 orders. IBM-PC format. 



The nations largest corporations depend on 
PC NETWORK! 

On our corporate roster are some of the nation's largest 
financial industrial and professional concerns including sc 



Barclays Bank 

Bell & Howell 

Citibank 

Columbia University 

Data General 

Exxon 

Farm Bureau Insurance 

Frontier Airlines 

General Milts 

General Electric 



General Motors 

Gillette 

Hewlett Packard 

Hughes Aircraft 

IBM 

ITT 

Kodak 

Multimate 

Standard Oil of Ohio 

Yale University 

Ve teran's A dmtnis t ration 



plus thousands of satisfied consulting firms, small businesses, 
user groups, municipalities, government agencies and value- 
wise individuals ACROSS THE NATION! Their buyers know 
that purchasing or renting from PC NETWORK saves them 
time, money and trouble. They also count on us for product 
evaluation, professional consultation and the broadest spec- 
trum of products and brands around. 



t 



CALL TOLL FREE 
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YES! Please enroll me as a member in the PC NETWORK '" and rush my 
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345 [ 

I am under no obligation to buy anything. My complete satisfaction is 
guaranteed. Please check (*•*) all boxes that apply: 
Bas 



□ One-year membership for $8 

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$15 (SAVE $1) 

] Business Software Rental 
Library for $25 add! per 
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Library for $10 add'l per year 



Special V.I. P. Membership" 

] One-year membership for $15 
Two-year membership for $25 
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Name . . — - — . — _ 

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My computed s) »:□ 

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IBM PC I 
Macintosh 



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Copyright I 1984. PC NETWORK, INC 

332 B YTE • APRIL 198S 



IONAL SOFTWARE 






(Please add Si shipping and handling for each title ordered from below.) 








Wholesale 




Wholesale 


Bluebush Chess (Your Toughest Opponent, $ 34.00* 


Screenplay Asylum (works with mono card too) $ 15.50" 


Bluechlp Millionaire/ 'Oil Baron or Tycoon 


34.00' 


Sierra On-Llne Ftogger 


21.00* 


Br Oder bund , tote Runner 


19.75* 


Sierra On-Llne Crossfire 


18.00* 


CBS > '-.■-' • ;• '.' ■ .'■ '' ■-•:- . 


48.00* 


Subloglc Night Mission Pmbali 


24.00* 


CBS Mastering the SAT 


81 00* 


Spinnaker Alphabet Zoo 


17.00- 


Epyx Temple 0' Apshai 


21.97* 


Spinnaker Delta Drawing 


29.00* 


Infocom Zork 1 or Wi/ness 


21 50* 


Spinnaker FaceMaker 


20.00* 


Infocom Deadline or Suspended 


27.00* 


Spinnaker Hey Diddle Diddle 


17.00* 


Microsoft Flight Simulator 


27,00* 


Spinnaker KmderComp 
Spinnaker Rhymes & Piddles 


17.00* 


Mouse Systems PC Paint-Turn your 


59.95* 


17.00* 


PC mto A Color Macintosh' 






Spinnaker Sfo'v Machine 


20.00* 


Orion JBird (OBert Look Alike) 


22.00' 


Spinnaker wv Amaz "0 Tnmg 


23.00* 


Scarborough Master type 

(Please add $2 


27.00' 

BUSINESS 


Virtual Comblnatics Micro Cookbook 


21.00* 


ATI Hew to use Multimate $ 42.00" 


Lotus Development Symphony 


CALL 


ATI How to use Microsoft Word 


42.00* 


MIcroRim RBase 4000 


$230.00' 


ATI How to use Lotus 1-2-3 


42.00' 


Microsoft C Compiler 
Microsoft Multiplan 


275.00* 


*■ Ashton Tate 






105.00* 


Ash ton- Tate * nday ' 


158.00' 


Monogram Dollars & Sense 


CALL 


Borland Side Kick (Protected) 


33.95* 














Oasis The Word Plus 


90.00* 


Conceptual Instruments Desk Organizer 


157.00' 


Open System* P/0 Sales AiR INV G/L A/P Team Mqr 370.00* ee. 


Oigltal Research CP M 86 


33.00* 


Real World GIL A/P A>R PlR or OE'INV 


387.50* 


Digital Research DP, Logo 


57.00* 


Rosesoft Prokey Version 3 


74.00* 


Digital Research PUi Compiler 


399.00* 


Ryan McFarland RM COBOL (Dev System) 


570.00* 


Digital Research Concurrent CP/M— Windows 1 95.97' 


Samna Samna III Word Processor 


325.00* 


Funk Software Sideways 


36.00* 


Satellte Software WordPerfect 


225.00* 


Harvard Harvard Project Manager 


215.00* 


Softcraft fancy Fonts 


125.00* 


Howardaoft Tax Preparer 1985 


177.00* 


Softstyle S£ T FX 


35.00* 








Software Publiahlng PFS File 


72.00* 


Human Edge T ne Management Edge 


145.00* 


Software Publishing PFS Report 


64.00* 


Human Edge T ne Sales Edge 


145.00- 


Software Publishing PFS Write 


72.00' 


Human Edge Mind Prober 


28.45* 


Software Publishing PFS Graph 


72.00* 


Lattice toiler 


310.00* 


TCS Total Ledger 


440.00* 


Verbatim Desk Drive Analyzer 


25.00* 


COMPLETE SYSTEM 






MULTIFUNCTION CARDS 




Apple Macintosh Base System 


$1,580,00* 


(34 I?* 


► Apparat 256K Memory Board with 64 K $ 


81.00* 


(1 75) 


Apple Apple He 


CALL 




►■ Apparat Combo II wsenpar'game' 


115.00* 


(2 48) 


Apple Apple He 


CALL 




dock stwr 






Columbia Desktop & Portable Systems 


CALL 




Apparat A T Ram Expansion card 
AST Six-Pack Plus with 64K 


136.00' 


(2 501 


Compaq An Models 


CALL 




229.00* 


(2 50) 


DATA General DG ONE 


2,099.00* 


(45 34) 


AST 1 O Plus II 


1 20.00* 


(2 50) 


128K ; Drive The Real Portable 






AST Advantage for AT 


CALL 




Eagle Desktop PC and Spirit Portables 


CALL 

1.497.00* 

1.974.50* 




► EVEREi v 






















ORCHID BLOSSOM W/64K 


205.00* 


(2 50) 


». COMPAQ 


2.735 00* 




Ouadram improved Quadboard w/OK 


199.00* 


(2 50) 








Tecmar Captain Multifunction Card OlK 


195.00* 


(2 50) 


IBM PC/AT Alt Contigs 


CALL 










Sayno MBC 550 lowest Cost Compatible 


620 00- 


(13 39) 


PRINTERS 






Tava PC Complete IBM Compatible 


1,200.00* 


(2592) 


Amdek 5025 (NEW) 25CPS LQ $ 


525.00* 


(10 48) 


(256KQ Drives) 






w/2K Butter 






Texas Instruments Professional 


CALL 




C, Itoh F10/40 Starwnter 40 CPS LO 


875.00* 


(18 90) 


DISK DRIVES & CONTROLLERS 




C.nohPrownter85WAP 

Com-ex CR420 420 CPS DP/LQ Printer 


285.00* 
1,533.00* 


(6 16) 
(33 12) 


► PC Network 


$ 55500' 




From the Epson Organization 






* MMI X 10MB Low Power Winchester 


615.00* 


(13 50) 




520 (X' 1, 




Mounts Uke Half Height Drive 






Epaon LQ1500 


CALL 




Maxtor 140MB External Auto Booting 


4,900.00* 


106 00) 


Epson IBM- to- EPSON Parallel Cable 
NEC 203Q2QCPSLQ Parallel 


21.00* 


tl 00) 


D'.ve with Controller tor PC 






625.00* 


(13 50) 


Maxtor J 40MB External Auto Booting 


4,600.00* 


10600) 








Drive lor AT 






NEC 3530 33CPS LO Parallel 


1,185.00* 


(31 54) 


Maynard Floppy Disk Controller 


92.00* 


(2 50) 


+ NEC 


.260.00- 




Maynard WS 1 WMB internal Hard Disk 


770.00* 


(18 15) 


NEC 


1.650 00* 




with Sandstar Multi Function Card 












Maynard WS 2 sam.j as WS- 1 but with 
Sandstar Floppy Controller (uses i slot) 


930.00* 


(20.30) 


r» Okldata 


200 00* 














Maynard Floppy Controller! Serial Port 


145.00* 


(2 50) 




109 00' 




a* Panasonic Half Heiqnt DSDD Drive Pair 


165.00* 


(3 10/ 








► PC Network •. 


145.00* 




► Okidata 


69.00 










Okldata ML84P 200CPS 132 Col 


620.00* 


(13 40) 


► Tandon TM 100-2 Full Height DSDD Drive 


102.00' 


(220} 


Okldata ML92P 1 60CPS 80 Col Printer 


350.00* 


(7 56) 


Tallgrass 20MB External Hard Disk 


2.150.00* 


(46 44) 


Okldata ML93P ISO CPS Wide Platen 


550.00* 


(1188) 


with Tape Backup 






Okldata 24 WP Pacemaker 350CPS 


1.640.00* 


(35 42) 


Teee F D 55-8 Halt Height DSDD Drive Pair 


225.00' 


(5 29) 


Okldata iBM-to-Okidata Parallel Cable 


20.75* 


(100) 


MEMORY CHIPS 

All chips guaranteed tor I 
a* 64K Memory Upgrade Kits 
a* S4K Dynamic Ram Chips 






Oume Sprint 1 t/40 40CPS Letter Quality 


1.155.00* 


(24 00) 


te 

S 19 98* 
222* 




Qume Sprint 1 U90 90CPS Letter Quality 

New' Fastest Daisywheel Out' 
Oume IRM Cable and interface (required) 


CALL 
72.00* 


(100) 


► 256K Dynamic Ram Chips 


20 00- 










r* 1 2BK AT Mother Board Chips 


16 00* 




Texas Instruments 8bi> DP/LO w'Tractor 


716.00* 


(15 50) 


MODEMS 






Toshiba P ? 340 80 Col Version of P- 135 1 


696.00* 


(15 03) 


Anchor Maik Xil LOWEST PRICE 1200BPS $ 230.00' 


(5.00) 


Toshiba P- 1351 1601 100 CPS Draft/ LQ 


1,200.00' 


(25 92) 


HAYES COMPATIBLE EXTERNAL MODEM' 




i Q Printer 






Anchor . - - :- 


47.00* 


(100) 


VIDEO CARDS 






Hayes 






►* Hercules Color Card wi Parallel Port $ 


148.00* 


(3 20) 


Prometheus Promodem 1200 
External 100% Hayes Compatible 

U.S. Robotics Password (Compact 
1200BPS External) 


279.00* 
245.00* 


(6 00) 
(6 50) 


Hercules Monochrome Graphics Cards 

Paradise New Modular Multidisplay Card 

Persyst Bob Card Ultra High Res Color 

Card with Mono Quality Text in Color 

r* STB Graphix Plus II NEW' 


298.00' 
255.00* 
365.00* 

235.00* 


(2.50) 
(2 50) 
(2 50) 

(5 00) 


MONITORS 






(simultaneous Mono Graphics & Color) 






Amdek Video 300G Composite Green 


S 110.00* 


(300) 








Amdek Video 300A Composite Amber 


120.00* 




ACCESSORIES AND SUPKLits> 




Amdek Video 3WA IBM Type Amber 
Amdek Color 300 (NEW) Composite 


130.00* 


(300) 


► Brand Name DSDDDis-. S 


14 00- 




215.00* 










Amdek C. >mt 600 iNt W ' i Hiqh Res RGB 


395.00* 


(8.53) 


Curtlas PC Pedestal II 


36.00* 


(2.50) 


Amdek Coh< 700 (NE W'i Ultra High Res 


455.00' 


•9 83 ' 


► PC Network Replacement 130 Watt IBM-PC 


165.00* 


(3 56j 


Amdek Color 710 (NEW 1 ) 700 w'Non 


485.00* 


HO 48) 


Power Supply— Gives your PC (Old or New) the same 


Ciare Long Phosphor 






capacity as an XT Good tor add m tape drives (without need 


Princeton HX-12 RGB Monitor 


CALL 




tor a pigqyback unit) and large capacity disk drives 




Princeton MAX- 121GB Mono 


CALL 




SMA PC Documate Keyboard Templates for 


9.99* 


(1.00) 


Princeton SR- 12 Ultra High Res PGB 


CALL 




Lotus DBASEiMultimate and others (Each) 






f Quadram 






WP Printer Paper J6O0 Sheets 

Microfine Perfs (mvis>ble when torn) 


17.00* 


(WOO) 


► Samsung 


89 SO' 
















PC NETWORK Members pay |ust 8% above trw 








price plus shipping 






Taxan 420 Super High Res RGB Monitor 
Texan 440 Highest Res RGB (720x400) 


380.00* 


(8 21) 


■■ 




525.00* 


(11 34) 








Currently Available Works With Persy st Bob Card 










Zenith ZVM 123 Green High Res 


76.00* 


(2 50) 








Consumer Reports Rated Best Buy') 













fRENT BEFORE YOU BUY — Members are eligible to join The NETWORKS Business and Game Software 
Rental Libraries and evaluate products for a full 14 (Regular) or 30 (VIP) days to see if it meets your needs. 
And The NETWORK'S rental charges are far less than other software rental sen/ices— JUST 20% OF THE 
MEMBER WHOLESALE PRICE. v e feature over 1.000 available titles in IBM Apple MAC and CP M 



Hardware prices highlited by 



reflect recent major price reductions 



COMPLETE LM 



PC SYSTEMS 




NETWORK 



IBM PC BASE SYSTEM ^ . .„ „ . 

IBMPCW/256K $1,497.00 (32.55) 

Floppy Drive Controller 

2 Double Sided Double Density 320'360K Disk Drives 
The Base System is your lowest cost starting point for configuring the exact system of your 
choice Combine it with any of the monitors, video cards, multifunction cards and 
accessories listed in this ad. and prove the Network can't be beat as your system source 

IBM PC PROFESSIONAL _ * m __. 

HARD DISK SYSTEM $1 ,974.50 (42.87) 

IBM PC W/256K 



$1,974.50* 






/ Double Sided Double Density 320.360K Disk Drive 
w Half Height Disk Subsystem. 

Half Height 10MB Drive Allows Room 
for Addition of Tape Backup in PC! 

1 times faster than XT 

Automatic Hard Disk Boot Feature 
This system increases productivity in any business or pror< 
hard disk eliminates cumbersome floppy disk changes. sir., K . 
dramatically speeds program execution time The NETWORK'S buying power provides 
you with better than XT performance at a price lower 
than you'd expect to pay for a standard PC 

*PC Network Members pay just 8% above this wholesale price plus shipping. 
These prices have been prepared in February, 1985 and may have been 
changed with new product announcements. Call for latest prices. 



COttlPAOL^ HARD DISK SYSTEM ( + ) 

PROFESSIONAL PORTABLE HARD DISK SYSTEM 
COMPAQ W/256K eo -« c nA * 

Floppy Drive & Controller d^^'OO. UU (59. 08) 

Integral dual mode monitor- 
Shock Mounted 3" WMB Auto Booting Hacd Disk. 

PC Network goes the COMPAQ + one better building a newer technology > height 
low power consumption hard disk into the standard COMPAQ Mounted with a 
height floppy drive in the space of 1 Conventional full height unit, you have expansion 
available to add up to 2 additional hard disk, tape or floppy drives in your portable. 
[ust like the Desk Pro All for about what you would pay for the standard 2 floppy 



r— FEATURED PRODUCTS! — 

h> 64K MEMORY EXPANSION KITS $ 1 9.98* 

^1 Set of 9 chips Guaranteed for Ufe. 

[> LOTUS 1-2-3 265.00* 

New Best Price! 

P> INTERNAL PC 1 0MB HARD DISK from 555.00* 

^ Low Power Automatic Boot works on standard PC's. Includes drive/controller/ 

cables/mounting hardware & instructions. 

We use our clout with Brand Name suppliers like COGITOMMI Tandon 
Fujitsu Miniscribe Shugart and others to bring you the best products at the 
Lowest Price in the Business! Call on the brand of your choice. 

r> V 2 HEIGHT DS/DD DISK DRIVES per pair from 1 45.00* (pr) 

2 drives wi mounting hardware & complete instructions. 

Just like our hard disks featured above. The Network buy's direct and makes 
fantastic deals with manufacturers like MPI Tandon CDC Shugart Qume 
TEAC and others to bring you fantastic prices and Name Brand drives for 
your PC/AT/XT or Jr/or Compatible. 

r> OKIDATA NEW PERSONAL PRINTERS 

^ Microline 182 120CPS IBM Graphics LQ Mode & More! + More! 200.00* 

Okimate Color 20 80CPS 1 00 + Colors/IBM Graphics 

LQ Mode + More! (Needs Interface) 1 09.00' 

TANDON TM100-2 OR CDC FULL HEIGHT DRIVE 105.00" 

EVEREX MAGIC CARD OK 170.00* 

Full six Pack Features — Game Port included Extra Software. 
p. AMDEKV310A IBM TTL AMBER... 130.00* 

r>STBGRAPHIXPLUSII .....235.00* 

^| Both Mono and Color Card wlp rinter port. Run either Monitor type or both at once! 

Gives 16 Colors wi Lotus. 

pj HERCULES COLOR CARD w Printer Port 148.00* 

U^ HAYES 1200B with new Smartcom II/VT100 Emulator 325.92* 

N> BRAND NAME DISKETTES 14.00 

U^| DS/DD Box of 10 Guaranteed for Ufe Not Generic 

"NETWORK members pay just 8% above these wholesale prices plus shipping 



CALL TOLL FREE 1 -800-621 -S-A-V-E (» 

* only * 

In Illinois call (312) 280-0002 validation code B345 

IBM and COMPAQ are registered trademarks 
of IBM and COMPAQ corporations. 



...WITH THESE 15 
UNIQUE BENEFITS 

1COST + 8% PRICING— The NETWORK purchases mil- 
lions of dollars in merchandise each month. You benefit in 
receiving the lowest price available and all at just 8% above 
published dealer wholesale price. 

2 OUR 600 PAGE WHOLESALE CATALOG— Members re- 
ceive our 600 page wholesale catalog containing over 20,000 
hardware and software products for the IBM PC, APPLE and over 
50 other popular computer systems. THE NETWORK'S CATA- 
LOG IS THE LARGEST SINGLE COMPILATION OF PERSONAL 
COMPUTER PRODUCTS AVAILABLE TODAY. NOW UPDATED 
QUARTERLY! 

3 IN-STOCK INSURED FAST HOME DELIVERY — The 
NETWORK maintains a giant multi-million dollar inventory 
of most popular products, allowing us to ship many orders from 
stock. Non-stock items are typically maintained in local ware- 
houses just days away from The NETWORK and YOU. Wepay all 
insurance expenses on your shipment. EMERGENCY OVER- 
NIGHT SERVICE IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST. 

41 DAY RETURN POLICY — If you are not satisfied, for 
any reason with any hardware component purchased from 
The NETWORK within 10 days of receipt, we will refund your 
entire purchase (less shipping) with no questions asked. 

5 MEMBERSHIP SATISFACTION GUARANTEE— If for 
any reason you are not satisfied with your membership within 
30 days, we will refund your dues IN FULL. 

6 EXPERIENCED CONSULTANTS— The NETWORK hires 
consultants, not order takers, to aid you in product selection. 
Our consulting staff possesses in excess of 1 50 man years of per- 
sonal computer product experience. We back our consultants 
with our money back guarantee: IF ANY PRODUCT RECOM- 
MENDED BY OUR CONSULTING STAFF FAILS TO PERFORM 
AS PROMISED — WE WILL TAKE IT BACK AT OUR EXPENSE 
FOR A 100% REFUND. 

7 FREE TECHNICAL SUPPORT— The NETWORK supports 
every product it sells. Our qualified TECH-SUPPORT staff will 
help you assemble your system, interpret vendor documentation 
and get your software and hardware to work. WE WILL GIVE YOU 
ALL THE HELP YOU NEED. WHEN YOU NEED IT— FREE! 

+ Q OPTIONAL BUSINESS RENTAL LIBRARY — All mem- 
O bers can join our BUSINESS RENTAL LIBRARY featuring 
over 1000 available titles for just S25 PER YEAR above the base 
membership fee. This entitles you to rent business software AT 
JUST 20% of the DISCOUNT PRICE FOR A 14 DAY PERIOD. If 
you decide to keep the software, the entire rental fee is de- 
ducted from the purchase price. VIP MEMBERS GET A FULL 
30 DAYS for just $30 above the V.I. P. base fee. This also in- 
cludes the game library privileges for a $5 combination 
savings. 

tQ OPTIONAL GAME SOFTWARE RENTAL LIBRARY — 

*# The Game Rental library is available to members for just $1 
PER YEAR and permits evaluation (or just enjoyment) of any 
game or educational software product as above. 

1f| SPECIAL SAVINGS BULLETINS— THE PRINTOUT 
w — Issued Quarterly at no charge to Network members only! 
The Printout contains all the New Product listings and price 
changes you need to keep your Catalog up to date. Also, we buy 
excess dealer inventories, and store bankruptcy closeouts, which 
we turn around and make available to our members at fantastic 
savings via THE PRINTOUT 

1-1 DISCOUNT BOOK LIBRARY— Working with numerous 
I publishers and distributors, The NETWORK has assembled 
a library of over 1000 computer related books and manuals at sav- 
ings of up to 75% from the normal store price. 

1Q MEMBERSHIP REFERRAL BONUS— Our most valu- 
^ able source of new members is you! To date almost 40% of 
our members have been referred by word of mouth from other sat- 
isfied members. For those of you who refer new members, The 
NETWORK will credit a cash bonus to your account applicable to 
any future purchase. 

1Q CORPORATE ACCOUNT PROGRAM— Almost 50% of 
O The NETWORK'S members are corporate buyers and users 
(see opposite page left). The NETWORK can establish open 
account status and assign designated account managers to ex- 
pedite orders, and coordinate multiple location shipments. 

1A QUANTITY DISCOUNTS— For large corporations, clubs, 
H" and repeat or quantity buyers The NETWORK can extend 
additional single order discounts, when available to us from our 
manufacturers and distributors. 

1C PRICE PROTECTION— The PC Industry is crazy!! Prices 
9 change not yearly or monthly or even weekly but often day 
by day! These changes are sometimes up but are mostly down!!! 
THE NETWORK GUARANTEES THAT IN THE EVENT OF A 
PRODUCT PRICE REDUCTION, BETWEEN THE TIME YOU 
PLACE YOUR ORDER AND THE TIME THE PRODUCT SHIPS 
YOU WILL ONLY PAY THE LOWER AMOUNT!! 



Inquiry 295 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 333 



BYTE 



Reviews 



Reviewer s Notebook 

by Glenn Hartwig 337 

The ITT XTRA 

by )ohn D. Unger 338 

Insight-A Knowledge System 

by Bruce D'Ambrosio 345 

Review Feedback 348 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. The phrase seems randomly applied in a wide 
variety of contexts by a growing number of people from diverse backgrounds. 
This month's theme section gives you the theories and the potential as viewed 
by some of the world's most astute observers. "But," you ask yourself, "what 
can I do with it?" And in order to answer that question satisfactorily you have 
to know what products are available now, what they can do, and their specific 
approach to AL One point you couldn't really get away from until now was 
the fact that most AI products were specialized and expensive. Building your 
own knowledge base and using the computer to help you arrive at a solution 
that neither you nor it knew in advance depended on custom databases and 
large amounts of computing power. With our first review this month, we see 
that things may be starting to change. 

Insight, from Level 5 Research, sells for $95, is designed for IBM Personal 
Computers (PCs) and compatibles, and lets you build your own expert system 
through goal-outlining procedures and probabilistic reasoning. Reviewer Bruce 
D'Ambrosio doesn't give it high marks for completeness, but he notes that 
some of the basic tools are there. For example, while Insight gives you Boolean 
and numeric data types, it does not give you character data or the capability 
to structure variables into records or frames. Still, its inability to structure data 
isn't a major handicap as long as the problems are simple and you use a single 
kind of data. Mr. D'Ambrosio gives Insight a nod as a possible AI learning 
aid. Expert-system development tools are beginning to work their way down 
to the microcomputer level, and Insight is an example of something you can 
use right now. It's not fully realized in some respects, but it's not a game either. 

John Unger takes a look at ITT's entry in the IBM PC-compatible sweepstakes, 
the XTRA. Mr. Unger notes that while the XTRA may be attractive in a lot 
of home or office situations, it breaks no technological ground. It uses an 
8088 microprocessor at a 5-MHz clock rate, just slightly faster than the IBM 
PC's 4.77 MHz but not so fast that it can't run most IBM PC applications soft- 
ware. ITT bundles a communications package with the XTRA, which is logical 
enough when you think about it. Except that not every communications com- 
pany thought about it. The AT&T 6300, for example, is bereft of communica- 
tions software. It's an indication that the XTRAs designers and packagers used 
some forethought. Mr. Unger reports that the XTRA features a number of 
these design touches, which seem to indicate that the company made an ef- 
fort to provide a product that can complement, as well as compete with, the 
IBM PC. 

—Glenn Hartwig, Technical Editor, Reviews 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 335 




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You know about disk emulators. They're fast semiconductor disk 
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That's enough storage for dozens of large programs and 
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you want to do with a disk drive. But that's not all With SemiSpool, 
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Another thing about disk emulators. Unless they're from 
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IBM PC, XT, AT 


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336 B YTE • APRIL 1985 






Inquiry 346 



REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK 



Cygnet Technologies Inc.'s Com- 
munication CoSystem is a com- 
bination of hardware and software for 
integrating the telephone with your 
IBM Personal Computer (PC) or com- 
patible. For example, you can use it 
to store a 400-listing telephone direc- 
tory—each number of which you can 
access by category, alphabetical 
order, frequency of use, or with a 
special speed-dialing code. Each 
desktop unit gives you one or two 
telephone lines that you can mix be- 
tween tone dialing or rotary dialing or 
both. You get three-party conference 
calling. You can dial with the phone 
still on the hook; this is actually more 
useful than it sounds because you can 
listen with half an ear to a volume- 
controllable speaker for the other par- 
ty to pick up before you have to give 
it your complete attention. You also 
get the option of connecting a 
microphone and using the unit for 
general conference calling. 

If you have two or more CoSystems 
you get attended or unattended elec- 
tronic mail. You can also exchange 
screens and send and receive files to 
disk. An electronic calendar lets you 
store your appointments, and it beeps 
when it's time to be somewhere, call 
someone, or do something. 

What it won't do is let you use one 
telephone line simultaneously for 
both voice and data. I've heard about 
exotic systems that provide this kind 
of line sharing, and I thought CoSys- 
tem— priced at about $1800— was ex- 
pensive enough to be that exotic. 

Still, for an office where individuals 
do a lot of telephone work along with 
a lot of noncommunicating work on 
an IBM PC, the CoSystem offers a lot 
of useful features. Because of the 
price tag, I doubt if it will displace a 
pop-up menu program combined 
with a regular push-button-phone/ 
modem-within-arm's-reach for most 



BYTE readers, but I wouldn't be sur- 
prised if I saw one in use at a car- 
rental agency. 

General Computer Company, 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
showed us its Hyperdrive, an internal- 
ly mounted 10-megabyte hard disk for 
the Macintosh. The expansion pack- 
age also grows the RAM to 51 2K 
bytes. What the company does is line 
up a dealer. You go to the dealer, who 
takes your Mac, opens it up, installs 
the hard disk and new RAM, closes 
it up, gives it back, and charges you 
$2795. Simple, except that it voids the 
Apple warranty. To get around this. 
General Computer issues you a new 
warranty for your Mac as well as for 
whatever the dealer installs (you can 
get the Hyperdrive without the 512K- 
byte expansion package for $2195 if 
you already have a Fat Mac, but one 
way or another, you have to have 
512K bytes on your machine). General 
Computer also installs a fan with a 
temperature-sensor circuit that kicks 
into high when the temperature rises. 

By mounting the hard disk internal- 
ly and using a direct logic board in- 
terface to connect it to the Mac's main 
circuit, General Computer has left the 
serial port alone. You still get to use 
the standard connections for the 
modem, printer, or Applebus. 

Hyperdrive comes also with exten- 
sions to the Macintosh system soft- 
ware. You can partition the hard disk 
into 32 file drawers or "virtual disks" 
that automatically resize themselves 
whenever you add or remove data. 
You can add password protection at 
the file level, and you can also encrypt 
your files and applications. The icon- 
oriented user interface stays the same, 
except that you get new icons for the 
new functions. 

We're supposed to get one of these 
megaMacs for evaluation, and I'm 



looking forward to seeing how well it 
performs. 

We've been running the Ericsson 
PC for the past few weeks as a 
sort of common-property IBM-com- 
patible for those of us who need only 
occasional access to the 5!4-inch MS- 
DOS/PC-DOS format. It has a very 
nice amber-on-brown display, and the 
little stand for elevating the monitor 
is one of those features whose merits 
become increasingly appreciated. It's 
supposed to have an ergonomically 
enhanced keyboard, and on the desk 
it does seem quite comfortable; for 
laptop typing, however, I found it too 
light and the cord too short. Hardly 
major complaints, being subjective as 
they are. Too, I thought it curious but 
not horribly distressing that, while 
compatible with all of the application 
programs we have put into it it will 
boot only its own version of DOS. The 
MS-DOS we've used for other IBM PC- 
compatibles simply won't work. It's 
not that the disk just spins forever in 
the drive— the screen goes dead, the 
drive unit goes dead, and you can't 
restart it with a Ctrl-Alt-Del. However, 
seeing as how you get Ericsson DOS 
with the system, this particular curiosi- 
ty is simply a curiosity and nothing 
more. 

The Ericsson PC looks intriguing 
from a number of aspects. It does 
seem generally compatible with most 
standard software, and it gives the ap- 
pearance of being well planned in 
terms of those features the user will 
have the most contact with, i.e., the 
keyboard and the screen. It has a nice 
small footprint for a desktop, and the 
evaluation unit sent to us came with 
a rack for housing it on edge on the 
floor. This is another unit I'm looking 
forward to reviewing. 

— Glenn Hartwig. Technical Editor, Reviews 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 337 




SYSTEM REVIEW 



It's 



compatible 

with— and it 

improves 

upon— the 

IBM PC 



by John D. Unger 



John D. Unger (POB 95. 
Hamilton. VA 22068) is a geo- 
physicist studying earthquakes and 
the crustal structure of earthquake- 
prone regions for the U.S. govern- 
ment. He has a B.S. and an M.S. 
from MIT and a Ph.D. from Dart- 
mouth. He enjoys running, skiing, 
and keeping a family of five 
organized. 



The ITT XTRA 



The IBM Personal Computer (PC) is 
an easy mark for improvement, and 
almost every compatible today 
does many things faster or better than the 
PC. The ITT XTRA is no exception; it com- 
bines compatibility with a number of im- 
provements on the IBM PC and some of the 
clones. There are, however, no important 
hardware innovations to differentiate it from 
compatible microcomputers. Rather, some 
other, more subtle reasons may form the 
basis for choosing the XTRA. 

It appears that ITT is aiming the machine 
at business users who have an IBM or 
similar computer at the office and want a 
compatible machine at home The commu- 
nications software bundled with the XTRA 
suits this purpose. 

A color/graphics board also allows the 
computer to run IBM PC game software. 1 
reviewed an XTRA with 2 56K bytes of RAM 
(random-access read/write memory), two 
double-sided double-density floppy-disk 
drives, and a monochrome monitor and 
monochrome display board. This standard 
configuration has a list price of $2395. 

Hardware 

The XTRA (see photo 1) has the conven- 
tional three-piece grouping: a main unit that 
contains the processor and disk drives, the 
monitor, and a detached keyboard. 

The ASCII (American Standard Code for 
Information Interchange) keyboard differs 
slightly from the IBM PC/XT keyboard (see 
photo 2). Both the Caps Lock and Num Lock 
keys have light-emitting diodes (LEDs). All 
of the keys repeat after about half a second. 
The keycodes are identical to those for the 
IBM PC. 

The amber monitor measures 12 inches 
diagonally and produces crisp, high-quality 
characters in a font style that is easy to read 
(see photo 3). The characters, formed from 
a 7- by 9-pixel matrix in a 9- by 12-pixel cell, 
are displayed on an 80 by 2 5 screen. There 
is no blurring or distortion as the screen 
scrolls. The monochrome mode includes 



the standard attributes— reverse video, 
blinking, half- and high-intensity, and under- 
lining—in various combinations and per- 
mutations. I cannot say much about the 
graphics capability of the system since 1 did 
not have a graphics board to test in the 
XTRA. However, I did note that the BIOS 
(basic input/output system) ROM (read-only 
memory) routines included interrupt-driven 
functions that appear identical to those 
used in creating medium- and high-resolu- 
tion graphics on the IBM PC, and graphics 
video RAM is located at the same memory 
addresses as in the IBM PC. 

Storage 

The XTRA uses half-height double-sided 
double-density disk drives, each with a 
storage capacity of 360K bytes. The drives 
operate quietly. However, the slot for the 
lower or B: drive sits only 2% inches above 
the table top. If the keyboard is less than 
6 or 7 inches from the front of the main unit, 
it is difficult to insert disks into the drive 
without flexing them somewhat to clear the 
keyboard. 

The user's guide contains complete and 
easy-to-follow instructions for installing a 
half-height 1 Omega byte hard-disk drive. 
This is a modification that requires an 
expansion card with a controller for the 
hard disk. 

Internals 

To lift the cover off the main unit and gain 
access to the IBM-compatible expansion 
slots, the disk drives, and the motherboard, 
you need only remove two screws from the 
rear panel. The XTRA uses an 8088 micro- 
processor at 5 MHz, a nominally faster 
clock rate than the IBM PCs 4.77 MHz. Next 
to the 8088 is a socket for installing an 8087 
arithmetic coprocessor. The motherboard 
can hold 2 56K bytes of RAM (the XTRA 
uses standard 4164 64K-bit RAM chips in 
its memory); expansion cards can bring ad- 
ditional memory to a total of 640K bytes. 
Because the XTRA performs a parity check 



338 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



on its RAM, nine 64K-bit chips have to be 
installed for every additional 64K bytes of 
memory. When powered up, the system 
takes about 32 seconds to check the RAM 
with 2 56K bytes installed. To disable the 
check, you can open the case and easily set 

1 position on one of two 8-position DIP 
(dual-inline package) switches. The switches 
also set the amount of motherboard 
memory, the type of monitor, the number 
of floppy-disk drives, a screen time-out 
feature, and the presence or absence of the 
8087 coprocessor. 

The XTRA comes with 32K bytes of ROM. 
most of which holds the BIOS, but the ROM 
also provides a set of system diagnostics. 
These routines are mentioned only briefly 
in the documentation I received, but the op- 
tional technical reference manual describes 
them in more detail. Pressing the Esc, Ctrl, 
and Alt keys at the same time runs the pro- 
gram. TVping H at the => prompt gives you 
a menu with options for running diagnostics 
of the system hardware, memory, disk 
drives, video display, and keyboard. The 
menu also provides access to powerful util- 
ities that read and modify disk sectors and 
memory. 

Interfaces 

The main unit's back panel contains two 

2 5-pin DB-2 5 connectors. One, labeled 
"Printer," is a female Centronics-compatible 
printer port; the other, marked "Comm. 
Line." is an RS-232C male asynchronous 
serial port for communications or a serial 
printer. An ITT-supplied communications 
program can configure the serial port from 
110 to 9600 bps (bits per second). Both 
ports are "hard-wired" into the mother- 
board and therefore do not use the expan- 
sion slots. The optional Combo expansion 
board includes a second parallel printer 
port. 

Software 

Advertisements I have seen offer the XTRA 
only with the standard ITT-DOS 2.11 (MS- 



DOS 2.11) and Advanced BASIC. ITT's 
BASIC-Ianguage interpreter. As might be ex- 
pected from a communications company 
like ITT, the ITT-DOS disk contains an asyn- 
chronous communications program that 
enables you to access on-line telecom- 
munications services as soon as you con- 
nect your modem. Or you can access a 
nearby computer by running a cable direct- 
ly from the RS-232C communications port 
on the XTRA. The communications pro- 
gram includes options to choose param- 
eters, to upload or download ASCII files, 
and to exit to the operating system without 
disconnecting. It is a simple, straightforward 
communications program, but it lacks many 
of the features— like providing a directory of 

[continued] 




Photo I: An ITT XTRA with two 36QK-byte disk drives. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 339 



REVIEW: !TT XTRA 



phone numbers—of PC-Talk III. 

ITT describes Advanced BASIC as 
Microsoft MS-BASIC with GW-BASIC 
extensions. The full-screen editor and 
command syntax will be familiar to 
users of either BASICA or GW-BASIC. 
The graphics and music commands 
are identical to those of BASICA; in 
fact, the two chapters in the ITT BASIC 
manual describing these features are 
taken directly from Lyle |. Graham's 
Your IBM PC (Berkeley, CA: Osborne/ 



McGraw-Hill, 1983). Improvements in 
the BASIC benchmarks over those for 
the IBM PC must be owing to en- 
hancements in the BASIC interpreter 
because the processor clock speeds 
are nearly identical. The users guide 
suggests that the disk with the BASIC 
interpreter includes a number of sam- 
ple BASIC programs, but the disk I re- 
ceived with my system did not con- 
tain these files. 
1 used WordStar and Multiplan writ- 







TTTTTTTTT 



* ™ 








., 


' 



Photo 2: The ITT XTRA keyboard has LEDs on the Caps lock and Num bock keys 
and a layout that resembles the IBM Select ric. 



tftitf HELP ****** 

1. Function keys art used at follows 

Fl = Quit and raturn to ITT-DOS 

F2 = Display and change parameters 

F3 ■ Upload the ITT PC flit to tha host computer 

F4 ■ Download the host computer file to the ITT PC 

FS ■ Display sorted file directory 

F6 = Display help message 

F7 ■ Remove or display function key Una 

F8 m Send break signal to the host computer 

(Also use for aborting file transfer) 
Control p = Toggle for printer ON/OFF 

— Hint for File transfer between ITT PC and UNIX system — 

l.To send file to the UNIX system 

enter 'cat >f ilename* and hit F3 key in the TERMINAL mode 
and enter filename of the ITT PC on bottom line 

2. To receive file from the UNIX system 

enter 'cat <f ilename' and hit F4 key in the TERMINAL mode 
and enter filename of the ITT PC on bottom line 

Press any key to return _ 



Photo 3: A sample screen display on the ITT XTRAs amber monitor. 



ten for the IBM PC to run the bench- 
mark tests for the XTRA; both pack- 
ages ran perfectly. 

Documentation 

The user's guide provides simple, 
easy-to-follow instructions for setting 
up peripherals and the computer 
hardware; it also describes the MS- 
DOS functions that run the system 
software. The BASIC manual is well 
organized, with separate sections on 
file I/O (input/output) and the more 
complex graphics and sound com- 
mands. The third manual explains the 
MS-DOS commands and the more 
elaborate programs like EDLIN and 
DEBUG. The manual is quite com- 
plete and includes the DOS functions 
available through BIOS ROM inter- 
rupts, of considerable interest to pro- 
grammers writing software for the 
XTRA. 

Compatibility 

I tested a few crucial pieces of IBM 
software, including WordStar, Multi- 
plan, and the DeSmet C Compiler; all 
of them ran without problems. 
Perhaps more important, I examined 
the BIOS ROM interrupt structure and 
memory model. There is little to pre- 
vent almost complete compatibility 
with the IBM PC The biggest dif- 
ference between the XTRA and the 
IBM is that the IBM has part of its 
BASIC interpreter in ROM. Software 
that uses this feature directly will not 
run on the XTRA. 

There is excellent compatibility be- 
tween IBM BASIC and ITT s Advanced 
BASIC Virtually all programs written 
in BASIC for the IBM should run on 
the XTRA with little modification. 

The five IBM-compatible expansion 
slots on the XTRA enable you to add 
many optional features and functions. 
Of course, the only sure compatibili- 
ty test for software and hardware is 
to try it on the XTRA. 

Sales and Support 

The first XTRA advertisements 1 saw 
proclaimed a nationwide sales and 
service network through the Com- 
puterLand franchise. I visited a near- 
lean tinued) 



340 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



AT A GLANCE 



Name 

ITT XTRA 

Manufacturer 

ITT Information Systems 
POB 52016 
Phoenix, AZ 85072 
(800) 321-9872 

Components 

Processor: 8088 at 5 MHz; 
socket for 8087 coprocessor 
Memory: 128K dynamic RAM 
(standard) expandable in 
128K increments to 640K; 
32K ROM (BIOS, bootstrap, 
and self-test) expandable to 
64K; 4K text video RAM on 
monochrome board, 16K 
graphics video RAM on 
color/graphics board 
Display: monochrome is 80 
columns by 25 lines 
Monitor: monochrome, 
12-inch diagonal, 640- by 
400-pixel resolution 
Keyboard: detached QWERTY 
with 84 keys including 10 
function keys, numeric 
keypad, and cursor keys 

Software 

MS-DOS 2.11. Advanced 
BASIC, asynchronous 
communications 

Expansion Capability 

Five card slots (IBM PC bus) 

Documentation 

User's guide, 218 pages; 
Advanced BASIC manual, 505 
pages; ITT DOS manual, 410 
pages 

Prices 

Model I 

(128K, single 360K 

drive, monochrome) $1895 

Model II 

(256K, two drives, 

monochrome) $2395 

Model III 

(256K, single drive, 

10- megabyte hard 

disk, monochrome) $4395 

Monochrome units include 

monochrome monitor and 

monochrome expansion 

board 





''•' :■':•' 'y': ; : : y : M ■ 



■i I !■ 



MEMORY SIZE {K BYTES) 

200 400 600 



DISK STORAGE (K BYTES) 
400 800 1200 



1600 2000 




I 'I 









BUNDLED SOFTWARE PACKAGES 
2 4 6 



PRICE ($ 1000) 
10 2 4 6 8 10 





1TT XTRA IPl IBM PC &Z% APPLE H E 



The Memory Size graph shows the standard 
and optional memory available for the three 
computers under comparison. The Disk 
Storage graph shows the highest capacity of 
a single floppy-disk drive for each system. The 
Bundled Software Packages graph shows the 
number of software packages included with 
each system. The Price graph shows the list 



price of a system with two high-capacity floppy- 
disk drives, a monochrome monitor, a printer 
port and a serial port, 256K bytes of memory 
(64K bytes for 8- bit systems), and the standard 
operating system and BASIC interpreter for 
each system. Note that the price of the ITT 
XTRA does not include the cost of the col- 
or/graphics board. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 341 




The rear panel has a Centronics-compatible printer port, 
an RS-232C port, and five IBM -compatible expansion slots. 



DISK ACCESS IN BASIC (SEC) 
250 



200 



:5c 



50 




Inside the XTRA. The disk drive extends toward the front of the 
unit. The five expansion slots and fan are evident. 



BASIC PERFORMANCE (SEC) 
250 



200 




100 



WRITE 



SYSTEM UTILITIES (SEC) 
50 



READ 



SIEVE 



CALCULATIONS 




SPREADSHEET (SEC) 
25 



40 K FORMAT/ DISK COPY 



40K FILE COPY 
I ITT XTRA 




The graph for Disk Access in BASIC shows how long it takes to write 
and to read a 64K-byte sequential text file to a blank floppy disk. 
(For the program listings see June 1984 BYTE, page 327, and Oc- 
tober, page 33.) In the BASIC Performance graph, the Sieve results 
show how long it takes to run one iteration of the Sieve of Eratosthenes 
prime-number benchmark. In the same graph, the Calculations col- 
umn shows how long it takes to do 10,000 multiplication and divi- 
sion operations using single-precision numbers. The System Utilities 



IBM PC 



graph shows how loncj it takes to format and copy a disk (adjusted 
time for 40 K bytes of disk data) and to transfer a 40K-byte file using 
the system utilities. The Spreadsheet graph shows how long the com- 
puters take to load and recalculate a 25- by 25-cell spreadsheet 
where each cell equals 1.001 times the cell to its left. Microsoft 
Multiplan was the spreadsheet used. The tests for the XTRA used 
MS-DOS 2.11 and ITT Advanced BASIC. Tests for the Apple lie were 
done with ProDOS. The IBM PC was tested with PC-DOS 2.0. 



342 BYTE' APRIL 1985 



REVIEW: ITT XTRA 



by outlet to get some background 
pricing and technical information and 
to see what kind of support an owner 
of an XTRA might receive. I didn't 
mention that I was writing a review of 
the XTRA. A prominently displayed 
XTRA with a large "40% OFF" sign im- 
mediately caught my eye. A salesman 
told me that I was indeed a lucky 
fellow if I wanted an XTRA because 
the store had two hard-disk models 
in stock at a sale price of $2995, 
marked down from the list price of 
$4995. When I asked about the sale 
he told me that the computer had not 
"moved" very well, and that they were 
no longer going to stock it. 

I telephoned two other stores. At 
the first store, someone said they had 
never sold the XTRA. When I men- 
tioned ITT's claim that ComputerLand 
franchises are selling the machine, the 
person said that individual store 
managers could decide whether to 
carry a given computer. A salesman 
at the third store said that they had 
stocked the XTRA for a few months 
but discontinued it due to poor sales. 

I still needed information on the 
price and on the availability of hard- 
ware and software options, so I called 
the toll-free phone number that ITT 
provides. A very helpful woman de- 
scribed the available options but said 
that she "wasn't allowed" to give out 
prices. ITT was running a promotional 
rebate program for the XTRA, and 
each dealership could set its own 
price for the microcomputer in order 
to compete for prizes. She then gave 
me the phone numbers for the stores 
I had already contacted; when I ex- 
plained my experience with these 
stores, she gave me the phone 
number of ITT's sales representative 
for my area, whom I then called. He 
informed me that he worked for the 
part of the ITT sales force that deals 
with large purchases. Nonetheless, he 
gave me price information and told 
me that he could sell at list price to 
individuals if they couldn't otherwise 
find what they wanted. 

Conclusion 

The machine appears to be well made 
and sturdy; I had absolutely no trou- 



ble with it. And if something goes 
wrong, the built-in diagnostics should 
help pinpoint problems. The docu- 
mentation lets even novice computer 
users set up the hardware and get the 
system running smoothly. The XTRA 
should run most of the software avail- 
able for the PC, and it is easy to add 
PC-style expansion boards. However, 



you should consider ITT's relationship 
with ComputerLand and where you 
would go for sales and support. ITT's 
toll-free telephone number ((800) 321- 
7661) for technical information com- 
pensates somewhat for the problem. 
ITT's low price, especially considering 
the discounts I encountered, makes 
the XTRA an attractive value. ■ 



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Inquiry 84 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 343 



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Alloy Computer Products Inc., 100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Framingham, Massachusetts 01701. Tel: (617) 875-6100, TWX: 710-346-0394 
In Europe: Alloy Computer Products (Europe), Ltd., Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. Tel: 0285-68709, Tlx: 43340 



344 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 



- 




SOFTWARE REVIEW 

Insight— 

A Knowledge System 



system with 
limited 



BY 

Bruce D'Ambrosio 



A n £*Yn£*rt T ns i§ nt ' an artificial-intelligence (AI) sys- 

rVll CApcl I I tem developed by Level 5 Research for 

ML IBM PCs and compatibles, lets users 
develop expert systems at reasonable cost. 
Insight is a user-friendly, rule-based, knowl- 
. I edge system, combining If. . Then rules 
pOtentlQl with goal outlining and probabilistic reason- 
ing. It needs 128K bytes of RAM (random- 
access read/write memory) and one disk 
drive, and it sells for $95. Upon close ex- 
amination Insight is limited and lacks many 
facilities required for developing practical 
knowledge-based programs. It might be 
best suited for educational purposes. 

Insight is a member of a growing class of 
programming systems that are rule-based. 
These programming systems include an "in- 
ference engine" capable of flexibly intercon- 
necting facts the programmer (knowledge 
engineer) provides specific to the problem. 
This frees you from concern about the flow 
of control in the program and lets you con- 
centrate on the knowledge necessary to 
solve the problem. Key aspects of such sys- 
tems are the facilities for structuring data, 
the flexibility of the rule language, the effi- 
ciency of the inference engine, and the 
program-development environment (avail- 
ability of an editor debugger, etc.). 

Data Structuring 

AI systems are designed for complex prob- 
lems that are not amenable to normal pro- 
gramming techniques, and they have 
generally provided highly sophisticated 
facilities for structuring data. Although In- 
sight has two basic data types, Boolean and 
numeric, neither character data nor the 
simplest structuring of variables into 
records or frames is available. Also, vari- 
ables reside in a single global context, 
analogous to early compilers in which no 
local variables existed within subroutines. 
Variable names in Insight can have 
Bruce Uhmbrosio (555 lulsa St.. embedded spaces; this permits writing 

San Urmw_ CA 94580) is , h , fc advanced but have an 

studying for his Ph.D. in computer . . .. . „ , 

science at the University of underlying simplicity. For example, in In- 

Qalifornia at Berkeley. Sight you can write 



IF the animal has hair 

THEN the animal is a mammal 

This looks less impressive if you know that 
the animal has hair is simply a variable 
name and could just as easily have been 
written the-animal-has-hair. 

This lack of data-structuring capability is 
not important for simple problems in which 
you never need to consider more than one 
of any kind of data. Imagine, however, a 
problem in which you need to consider 
several pieces of data of the same type. For 
example, you might need to gather infor- 
mation about all of an individual's bank ac- 
counts to advise him on banking services. 
Or you might have a diagnostic program 
that needs to gather information about 
several occurrences of failure before reach- 
ing a diagnosis. Rule-based systems do exist 
that offer the ability to structure basic data 
into more complex units that can be re- 
ferred to independently. (EMYCIN, the first 
general-purpose mainframe system de- 
signed for expert-system development, has 
such a facility called "contexts.") 

For example, you might gather all the facts 
about a bank account into a context called 
"bank account." You would then be able to 
write a rule in the form 

IF there is a bank account with 

deposits > $10,000 

AND that same bank account has 

stable months > 6 

THEN 

You could achieve the same effect in Insight 
only by laboriously reproducing each rule 
and data item and adding an extra variable 
to record the number of accounts: 

IF number of accounts > 1 

AND bank account 1 deposit amount 

> $10,000 

AND bank account 1 stable months >6 

THEN . . . 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 345 



REVIEW: INSIGHT 



AT A GLANCE 



Name 

Insight 

Type 

Knowledge system 

Manufacturer 

Level 5 Research 
4980 South A-1-A 
Melbourne Beach, FL 32951 
(305) 676-5810 

Format 

5 1 /4-inch floppy disk 

Computer 

IBM PC or compatible, DEC Rainbow, 
Victor 9000 

Features 

Rule compiler, inference engine, and 
sample knowledge bases 

Documentation 

44-page users guide 

Price 

$95 

Audience 

Those interested in Al technology and 
expert systems 

Comments 

A simple system of limited utility— best as 
an educational tool 



IF number of accounts > 2 

AND bank account 2 deposit 

amount > $10,000 

AND bank account 2 stable 

months > 6 

THEN . . . 

You have to hope that no one has 
more accounts than you allowed for. 
While you could use this technique 
for simple situations, you're in trou- 
ble if you need to nest such constructs 
(for example, if you wish to record a 
series of deposits for each bank 
account). 

Rule Language 

Like the data-structuring facility, In- 
sight's rule language is the minimum 
for a rule-based system. Unlike the 
data facility, however, there is no way 
around the limitations. The only oper- 
ations available in Insight's rule lan- 
guage are testing a Boolean variable's 
truth value, comparison of a numeric 
variable's value to a constant, and 
display of recorded text. Insight pro- 
vides no facilities for assigning values 
to numeric variables (other than by 
asking the user), performing even the 
most limited forms of arithmetic com- 
putation, or modifying text in any way 
before display (for example, by insert- 
ing the user name or the name of the 
current context). 

Perhaps the language's most limit- 
ing feature is that it does not provide 
any underlying general-purpose lan- 
guage into which the knowledge engi- 
neer can escape. It has been esti- 
mated that as much as 30 to 50 per- 
cent of the knowledge in a typical 
EMYCIN system is not in rules but is 
coded directly in LISP. Personal Con- 
sultant, a Texas Instruments knowl- 
edge-engineering tool for its TI PC, 
provides this facility with an escape 
into IQLISP, the underlying language. 
And M.l. a knowledge system from 
Tfeknowledge (Palo Alto, California) for 
the IBM PC, has extended the rule lan- 
guage into a complete symbolic-pro- 
gramming system, so that any ar- 
bitrary knowledge can be incorpo- 
rated. Insight has provided neither of 
these alternatives, and this seems to 
be a serious limitation. 



As an example, consider the follow- 
ing rule: 

IF liquid assets + equity > 

$100,000 

THEN client is wealthy 

Insight has no way to express this rule, 
except for the trivial interpretation 
that liquid assets + equity is a single 

variable. 

Inference Engine 

The inference engine in Insight, like 
that in many rule-based systems, is a 
simple backward-chaining engine. In- 
sight also has a structured goal 
mechanism that provides some ex- 
plicit measure of control over the run- 
ning knowledge program. This facili- 
ty lets you specify which problem 
areas in a particular Insight knowl- 
edge base interest you. And it allows 
construction of large multifaceted 
knowledge bases. I found this of 
limited utility. 

Other facilities provided by the in- 
ference component of some knowl- 
edge systems include "why" ques- 
tions that display the currently active 
rule, display of text that further 
describes the information requested, 
and justifications of conclusions 
reached. Although Insight always dis- 
plays the most immediate conclusion 
being sought, it does not provide any 
facility to display the entire rule or any 
way to display the chain of reasoning 
that led it to consider that rule. 

One nice feature is the ability to at- 
tach text explanations to variables. 
When a value is requested for a vari- 
able, say "liquid assets," you can 
press function key 4 to get an explana- 
tion of the term "liquid assets." 

And finally, Insight has an optional 
report that you can produce at the 
end of a consultation and direct to the 
console or the printer; the report 
serves some of the purposes of justi- 
fication. However, this report appears 
to be a randomly ordered listing of all 
rules considered and the conclusion 
reached. For one simple problem I 
presented (using the 15 rules for 
determining an animal species), In- 
sight produced a five-page justifica- 
tion listing. A justification should be 



346 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 313 



REVIEW: INSIGHT 



a more reasoned argument, limited to 
those rules that directly apply to the 
conclusions. This report feature might 
be useful for debugging, but it is not 
of much use as an end-user facility 

Environment 

The user interacts with Insight through 
a menu- and function-key-based inter- 
face. This interface is simple easy to 
use and seems well thought out. 
When the system can determine a list 
of options for a variable it presents 
them, and you can scroll through the 
list with the cursor until you select the 
desired option (shown by highlight- 
ing). 

You can use the function keys to 
select options such as restart (start the 
consultation over from the beginning), 
expand (display text explanation of 
this variable if one is available), and 
help (display Insight's internal-help 
text describing what is happening, for- 
mat for correct entry, and so on). The 
combination of user-defined expand 
displays, clear internal-help text, and 
menu-based display and input do 
make an Insight knowledge system 
easy to use. 

In General 

Insight is a compiler-based system, so 
rules, once written, must be pro- 
cessed by a rule compiler before the 
Insight inference engine can use 
them. Most of the compiler/inter- 
preter arguments apply to rule-based 
languages as well as procedural lan- 
guages, so you would expect Insight 
to be fast, capable of handling large 
programs, but not as convenient for 
program development. In fact, all 
these expectations are correct. (In- 
sight is memory-dependent, but on 
my system the compiler can compile 
rule bases of over 4000 rules. M.l can 
hold only about 200 rules, and TI PC 
about 400.) 

Insight has shortcomings if you use 
it for program development. You can- 
not obtain displays of the currently ac- 
tive rule chains. Since it is the in- 
ference engine, not the knowledge 
engineer, that links rules together, 
such a display would be very helpful 
in understanding the relationships 



between rules when building a knowl- 
edge base and would help the user 
understand why a rule-based program 
is asking a particular question. Also, 
as is usual with compiler-based sys- 
tems, you cannot interrupt a running 
program and inquire about the values 
of program variables (actually, sym- 
bolic debuggers for compiled pro- 
cedural languages do offer this capa- 
bility, but Insight has nothing com- 
parable). 

Insight provides no special aids for 
program development. The knowl- 
edge engineer must supply his own 
editor for constructing rule bases. 
Once a rule base is built as a text file, 
the PRGEN compiler converts the rule 
base into executable form. The com- 
piler has no options, and errors de- 
tected during compiling are displayed 
on the console. The error display in- 
cludes the text-file line number and 
a short error message. Although these 
error messages don't always point di- 
rectly to the problem in the source 
file, it is not too difficult to figure out 
what to change. 

Finally the Insight users manual (44 
pages plus appendixes) is adequate 
for using the system but leaves many 
areas vague. 1 would like more infor- 
mation on such details as the algo- 
rithms used for confidence value 
combination or the internal structure 
of the inference engine. [Editor's note: 
A confidence value is a method of answering 
an Insight question that is a numeric value 
between an absolute yes {a confidence value 
of 1) and an absolute no {with a value of 0). 
For example, if you were developing an expert 
system for choosing a wine, you could tell an 
expert system that you liked white wine with 
a confidence value of 0.8.] Such informa- 
tion can be important when you are 
attempting to engineer a complex 
knowledge base. 

For building rule-based systems. In- 
sight is a product that offers a friendly 
user interface and a rule compiler for 
fast execution of large rule bases. For 
$95, it offers an inexpensive way to 
explore the possibilities of rule-based 
systems. Its data-structuring facilities 
and rule language are so limited, how- 
ever, that it is only suitable for a small 
class of problems. ■ 



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REVIEW FEEDBACK 



More on MultiMate 

C I Puotinen did not stress enough 
MultiMate's problems with repagination 
and virtual paging in '"Leading Edge and 
MultiMate" (November 1984, page 287). 
The product is a nightmare for anyone 
who writes more than one-page docu- 
ments. MultiMate was geared toward a 
secretarial staff, but it's being recom- 
mended by salespeople as a Wang clone. 
There is no comparison; Wang's dedicated 
word processor works without a hitch, and 
professional writers can use it comfortably 
for composition. 

MultiMate is so unreliable that you 
shouldn't trust it for important documents. 
It is also unbearably slow for final editing 
when you are switching between pages. 

MultiMate works so poorly that I'm 
reluctant to spend money on a replace- 
ment in case that doesn't work either. Suf- 
fice it to say, I've learned to take the time 
to make backup copies so I can recover 
the parts of text I lose when repagination 
doesn't work. And Ms. Puotinen doesn't 
even mention how inconvenient it is to 
make a backup copy or the time it takes 
to proofread documents for MultiMate's 
errors. Before switching to a Tandy 2000 
and MultiMate, I used Microsoft Word and 
an IBM PC; I have regretted my switch 
since I made it. 

Maureen Fleming 
Stamford, CT 

Spirit 80 

I consider BYTE to be among the best 
computer magazines published today. 
However, one problem undermines your 
good editorial and journalistic intentions: 
your reviews, and those of other maga- 
zines, are simply not to be trusted. 

I have a Mannesmann Tally Spirit 80 
printer, and I have just finished reading 
Mark Welch's review (November 1984. 
page 33 5). Mr, Welch makes much of 
paper jamming but fails to point out two 
vital characteristics of the machine that 
prospective buyers need to know about. 

First, the Spirit offers only elite type. 
Also, only its right tractor slides; the left 
one is fixed. Should you wish to run labels, 
you cannot run them in the center, but 



only at the left margin. For a word pro- 
cessor that normally starts text in column 
nine, the left margin default must be ad- 
justed to zero, 

Shel Kagan 
Bristol, RI 

The Tandy 2000 

I read with pleasure the articles in BYTE 
concerning Tandy's computer products— 
particularly the review 'The Tandy Model 
2000" by Mark S. Jennings (December 
1984, page 239). As an alternative to the 
IBM PC or PC XT, the Tandy 2000 is a truly 
exceptional machine. I would like to make 
some comments about Mr. Jennings's fine 
review. 

Mr. Jennings does not adequately ex- 
plain the speed advantage of the 80186 
microprocessor. Simply stating that it has 
a higher clock rate is not enough— the 
80186 was completely re-engineered and 
the microcode was overhauled. An 80186 
running at 4.77 MHz (standard IBM speed) 
is almost twice as fast as the 8088. By 
almost doubling the clock rate from 4.77 
to 8.0 MHz, the Tandy 2000 can operate 
as much as four times faster than the IBM 
PC; some operations are even faster. In ad- 
dition, the 2000 is not hampered by 
transferring data from the processor to 
memory over an 8-bit data bus— it has a 
true 16-bit data bus. 

I must take exception to the claim that 
the Model 2000 does not achieve overall 
increased performance. I agree that the 
greatest improvement is achieved when 
running a processor-intensive application; 
however, the corollary is not necessarily 
true Disk-based applications run faster for 
two reasons; ability to use the 16-bit data 
path and a much faster disk drive than the 
Teac drives used in the IBM PC, Mr. 
Jennings states that there is no significant 
difference in disk I/O (input/output) speed, 
yet the published benchmark times in- 
dicate approximately a 50 percent im- 
provement, 

Mr, Jennings was not nearly critical 
enough concerning Tandy's manipulations 
of the basic input/output system (BIOS) for 
this machine. Fortunately, since his article 
was written. Tandy has released MS-DOS 
version 02.1 l.xx, which fixes many of 



these problems. Software that depends on 
the features normally available on the IBM 
PC now works correctly. 

Several times, Mr. Jennings alludes to 
having to perform a two-step operation for 
formatting and copying a disk; Disk Copy 
on the IBM PC does both. He must have 
missed the COMPDUPE utility, which not 
only does both but also performs a verify 
and a disk byte-for-byte comparison. 

Mr. Jennings correctly identifies an area 
that has pained us all: Color update on 
the monitor was terribly slow. The BIOS 
"error" that caused this has been cor- 
rected with the new release of MS-DOS. 
Also, Mr. Jennings is not entirely correct 
in saying that you cannot generate text in 
the color-graphics mode. If you are mix- 
ing text and graphics, this is true. If you 
want only color text, you can program the 
monochrome attribute ports (beginning 
with 0198 hexadecimal) to provide full- 
color attributes for your application at 
black-and-white speed. You can use this 
technique within BASIC by setting the 
screen into the black-and-white text mode 
with a SCREEN 0,0,0 statement and using 
Out to set the port values. 

I find that the Format command does 
not have extra options; in fact, several op- 
tions available on the IBM PC are missing. 
Specifically the options for formatting a 
single-sided disk, formatting with eight 
sectors, and allocating system file space 
are not available. While the first two op- 
tions are not really meaningful with the 
96-tpi (tracks per inch) drives, the latter op- 
tion is a loss. You cannot build a distribu- 
tion disk with the space allocated for 
system files. 

On the issue of software compatibility, 
I find that many generic MS-DOS pro- 
grams will run with no changes. Unfor- 
tunately most IBM PC programs go direct- 
ly to the hardware or ROM (read-only 
memory) firmware to bypass the system's 
slow speed. This is particularly true in 
most BASIC applications and I find these 
most incompatible with the MS-DOS 
machines. 

Mr. Jennings alludes to the generic 
nature of the software available through 
Tandy's Express Order Software. This is in- 
correct: Each package available through 

[continued) 



348 BYTE* APRIL 1985 




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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 349 




REVIEW FEEDBACK 



this service is completely compatible with 
the 2000 and generally will not work with 
any other IBM-type machine. Most have 
been fine-tuned to make use of the 2000s 
superior capabilities and are hardware- 
specific. 

Mr. Jennings comments that the 2000 
must be able to read IBM disks to run the 
software. The 2000 can read any 1BM- 
format disk, either single- or double-sided 
and either eight or nine sectors per track. 
Many of the software packages 1 have 
received are generic IBM PC/Model 2000 
and come on single-sided disks compati- 
ble with PC-DOS I.X or 2.X. Because of 
the narrow disk head required for 96 tpi, 
the 2000 cannot write understandable 
data to an IBM PC disk unless it has just 
been formatted. 

John B. Harrell III 
Washington, DC 

In regard to the 2000s processor, my ar- 
ticle mentions that the SOI 86 has a 16-bit 
data bus and that it has a number of 
functions on the chip rather than in 
separate chips as does the IBM PC's 
8088. I don't know about any overhauls 
of microcode, In any case, I have run a 
large number of programs on both ma- 
chines and have yet to see any program 
perform more than three times faster on 
the 2000, 

The lead to the article clearly states 
that the 2000 has better overall perfor- 
mance than the IBM PC. I correctly state 
that increases in performance depend on 
the program. Programs that are pro- 
cessor-intensive will show the most 
improvement. 

You overstate any disk-access speed 
advantage that the 2000 might have over 
the IBM PC The Disk Access in BASIC 
benchmark is a poor benchmark to com- 



pare pure disk-access speed because a 
significant amount of time is spent by 
BASIC interpreting the code. Please note 
that the 2000 is actually 41 percent 
slower than the IBM PC in the 40K File 
Copy benchmark; this benchmark is a 
better measure of how quickly the com- 
puter can simply read and write to disk. 
It might be true that the 2000 is faster 
in seeking random data on disk; I don't 
know because I haven 't seen any bench- 
marks. In any case, the average 2000 user 
is unlikely to notice improved disk per- 
formance over an IBM PC; my overall im- 
pression is that maybe it is a tad slower. 

By the way to my knowledge no IBM 
PC has come from the factory with Teac 
drives, although they are commonly fit- 
ted in the aftermarket. Tandon seems to 
be the most common IBM PC drive. 

You are entirely correct about the 
COMPDUPE command. I knew about this 
command, but the benchmarks had been 
previously run by a BYTE staffer who did 
not know about it. This is the reason for 
the reference to separate commands at 
the bottom of the benchmark com- 
parisons. 

I think it is still correct to state that the 
2000 cannot generate highspeed text in 
the color-graphics mode. The key point 
is that if you have a program that mixes 
color graphics and text on the same 
screen, you should be prepared for very 
slow text display. 

It would have been more accurate if i 
had said that the Format command has 
different options rather than extra op- 
tions. It does have one extra option (for 
setting skew and interleave factors) and 
it is missing several others. I agree that 
Tandy should have included the options 
for different disk formats. 

When I stated that most of the pro- 



Listing 1: Alternative Sieve benchmark for MacFORTH. 


8192 constant size 


create flags size allot 


.primes flags size 


01 fill ( empty array ) 


( prime counter ) 


size ( range ) 


do flags i+ c@ 




if 3 i+ i+ dup i + 


size < { avoid known nonprimes) 


do ic! dup 


( flick mod prime flags) 


+ loop 




then drop 1 + 


( another prime ) 


then 




loop 




. ." primes "; 




: TOtimes 1 sysbeep 10 do primes loop 1 sysbeep; 



grams available from the Express Order 
System were generic MS-DOS. I meant 
that most of them were fairly standard 
MS-DOS programs that the vendor could 
easily port over to the 2000. I did not 
mean to imply that they were somehow 
incompatible with the 2000. As to the 
comment that Express Order software 
will not work on an IBM-type machine, 
I think that this is usually due to copy- 
protection schemes and the fact that the 
80-track 2000 disks cant be read by a 
standard IBM PC None of the Express 
Order System programs that I have seen 
running seem to have any special fine- 
tuning. 

Your clarification of the 2000s capabil- 
ities to read and write IBM PC disks 
matches my understanding. However, I 
think that the article is fairly clear already 
in this regard. 

-Mark S. Jennings 
Durham, NC 

MacFORTH and the Sieve 

l wish to submit a correction to "The First 
Look at FORTH on the Mac" by Gregg 
Williams (December 1984, page All 5). In 
table 1 you list the time for the Sieve of 
Eratosthenes in MacFORTH at 36.2 sec- 
onds. The FORTH text in listing 1 at left 
is from block 7 of FORTH blocks includ- 
ed with MacFORTH 1.1. If you load it. you'll 
find that it runs 10 iterations of the Sieve 
in 20 seconds. 

I assume the times listed in table 1 are 

for one iteration with an array size of 81 99. 

David R. McDonald 

Pittsburgh, PA 

The Sieve program you sent does in fact 
run in 20 seconds. But you miss the point 
of a benchmark; to run the same code 
(as closely as possible) under different 
circumstances. If you had typed in the 
benchmark referenced in my article, your 
results would be close to mine. I retimed 
the benchmark and got times of 36.4 and 
3 7.0. I hope this explains the difference 
you found. 

-Gregg Williams 
Senior Technical Editor 



REVIEW FEEDBACK is a column of readers' 
letters. We welcome responses that support or 
challenge BYTE reviews. Send letters to Review 
Feedback. BYTE Publications. POB 372, 
Hancock. NH 03449. Name and address must 
be on all letters. 



350 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



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Bill Raike reports on activities at the International Con- 
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This month, Steve Ciarcia again answers readers' ques- 
tions in Circuit Cellar Feedback. 

Computing at Chaos Manor: Over the Moat 

by ]erry Pournelle 355 

Chaos Manor Mail 

conducted by )erry Pournelle 373 

BYTE West Coast: 

Lasers, Office Publishing, and More 

by }ohn Markoff and Phillip Robinson 379 

BYTE U.K.: New Database Ideas 

by Dick Pountain 389 

BYTE Japan: The Fifth Generation in Japan 

by William M. Raike 401 

Circuit Cellar Feedback 

conducted by Steve Ciarcia 408 



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354 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 317 




Golem Crashes 



The Name Game 

Copy-Protection Blues 

The Elusive SI 

Network Confusion 

Great Software Purge 

CP/M Bargains 



by Jerry Pournelle 



COMPUTING 

AT CHAOS MANOR 



Over the Moat 



terry Pournelle holds a doctorate in 

psychology and is a science-fiction 

writer who also earns a comfortable 

living writing about computers 

present and future. 



It's Christmastime at Chaos Manor, but 
you'd hardly notice it: there's a moat 
around my house. The City of Los 
Angeles has (finally!) come through with the 
building permit that lets us add a music 
room where the grapefruit tree used to be 
and a new library/office/workshop suite up- 
stairs. The architects and contractors lost no 
time in breaking ground. My front door now 
opens on a four-foot trench. Of course, no 
sooner was the trench dug than we had the 
worst rainstorm in four years. 

Amazingly, the mailman and other 
delivery people have braved the moat 
monsters, so there's plenty to write about. 

Once More into the Breach 

One of the first people to find his way 
across the moat was someone from Federal 
Express: three enormous boxes from Com- 
puPro— and on a Saturday yet. 

It seems I had an interesting failure. Corn- 
puPro has had a small number of hard-disk 
drives crash. It was rare, and fixable by 
reformatting: but it annoyed Dr. Godbout 
because his people couldn't make it hap- 
pen in the engineering labs. 

Then it happened to me. I'd backed up all 
the files— I'm very paranoid about that sort 
of thing— so all 1 really needed to do was 
reformat, but I thought I'd call CompuPro 
first, since I had a couple of other things 
to talk about. I described my symptoms and 
lamented that I'd have to reformat. 

"Don't touch it!" Bill Godbout com- 
manded. 

"Eh?" 

"We've been trying to get that bug to bite 
something we have a complete history of. 
Box up the whole system, disk drives, com- 
puter, the whole works, and ship it up. Don't 
even turn it on again." 

"Well, okay — - 

"I'll swap you a new—well, nearly new- 
system." 

That was an offer I couldn't refuse, so up 
it went, and on Saturday, a week before 
Christmas, there arrived a new System 



8/16— with some differences. 

My old CompuPro System 8/16, the 
Golem, had Qume DT-8 8-inch floppy disks. 
I may be one of the last people in the world 
to use 8-inch floppies, but I prefer them; 
they're noisy, but they're far more reliable 
than 514-inch, and each floppy holds 1.1 
megabytes, enough for a whole novel. My 
Qumes worked fine, and I'd just taken them 
out to Xerox for routine servicing— some- 
thing I recommend you do every couple of 
years. For $60 (the minimum charge) they'll 
check the alignment, clean everything, and 
give you a complete report on any pending 
problems. Anyway, my disks had just re- 
turned when the CompuPro boxes arrived. 

Qume no longer makes the DT-8 drives. 
CompuPro now sends half-height Mitsubishi 
double-sided double-density drives. They're 
just a little slower— 4-millisecond (ms) step- 
ping rate rather than the 3-ms rate of the 
Qumes— and you notice the difference, par- 
ticularly when doing a Copy or Format 
operation. On the other hand, their major 
purpose is safety and backup, since the 45- 
megabyte hard disk is the major storage 
system for the 8/16. 

The new Mitsubishi 8-inch floppies are in- 
credibly quiet. CompuPro is using new and 
different fans, too; the result is that the new 
System 8/16, even with hard disk, makes less 
noise than Zeke II, the CompuPro Z80 
(Qume 8-inch floppies, no hard disk) that 
I'm writing this on. 

There were a couple of other surprises: 
instead of the three half-megabyte M-Drive/ 
H RAM (random-access read/write memory) 
boards I used to have, there is now a single 
2-megabyte RAM-disk board— and instead 
of two 514-inch disk drives, there's one 
5 !4-inch and one cartridge-tape backup. The 
cartridge will back up an incredible pile of 
files in a short time. If that seems vague, it's 
because I haven't read the specs; we sim- 
ply turned it on and let fly and as I write 
this it's backing up the main system track 
for my hard disk; the operation took about 

{continued} 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 355 



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CHAOS MANOR 



four minutes to store 2,1 megabytes 
of commands and data a full 191 files. 

Before I got the hard disk, I didn't 
think I needed one; now I can't imag- 
ine how I got along without it. I 
suspect the same will be true of the 
tape backup unit. 

The new system came with yet an- 
other revision of the CP/M 8/16 BIOS 
(basic input/output system) software, 
which gets more sophisticated all the 
time. I guarantee you there will be at 
least one more change before you 
read this: just at the moment, if you 
try to get a "DIR L;" of the tape back- 
up cartridge, the machine locks up so 
thoroughly that not even Reset will 
save it; we had to turn it off and back 
on again. That's going to be fixed. 
WRITE, the text editor I use can auto- 
matically recover any text still in mem- 
ory or on the RAM disk; but nothing 
unsaved will survive power-down. 

Understand, there is software for 
getting the tape's directory; and 1 
don't expect it to take them long to 
come up with a way to recover from 
"DIR L:". . . 

Names, Names, Names 

CompuPro has a problem: every now 
and again someone looks up the com- 
pany's financial rating and mistaken- 
ly finds the entry for CompuCorp. 
CompuCorp is almost out of business 
and didn't do very well in the last year 
it got rated. CompuPro has actually 
lost sales because of this. The tele- 
phone receptionist is also getting 
weary of calls for "CompuPoo." 

Thus began the great name hunt. 
CompuPro engaged consultants and 
did market research. Eventually they 
selected a name and kept it secret 
until they completed all the legal work 
to protect the trademark. 

"It used to be," Bill Godbout said, 
"that you'd consult soothsayers and 
examine chicken entrails before 
undertaking something new like get- 
ting married or changing the com- 
pany name." 

"You're doing both— 

"Yes, and now you consult lawyers. 
They told me I'd be crazy to marry 
this year. Something about taxes. 
Next year. They've also approved tell- 



CHAOS MANOR 



ing you the new name. CompuPro is 
now Viasyn." 

"Viasyn?" I asked. I didn't say it 
sounded like a medicine "Why?" 

"Everyone can spell it. You studied 
Latin. Via for way, syn for synthe- 
sis. . ." 

CompuPro began as CompuKit 
back in the days when kit sales were 
usual in the micro business. (Ezekial, 
my first friend who happened to be 
a Z80, began life as Cromemco kits.) 
When Godbout began to sell assem- 
bled and tested gear, the company 
name was changed to reflect that. 

"Why not Godbout Computers?" I 
asked. 

"Market research says some cus- 
tomers think it's blasphemous." 

"It's your name— 

"Yeah, 1 know. Anyway, it's Viasyn." 

Oh, well. I suppose I'll get used to it. 

Meanwhile. I suppose 1 must have 
collected, over the years, about a 
dozen letters complaining about my 
practice of naming my machines. 
Some readers are mildly annoyed, 
particularly if they tuned in late and 
can't figure out which machine I'm 
writing about— a legitimate complaint, 
and I'll try to do better in future. 

Others are actually furious. One 
poison-pen letter— unsigned, of 
course— invited me to do obscene 
things with Adeline and dared me to 
print the letter. 

My new 8/16 hasn't told me its name 
yet. I expect I'll learn pretty soon. 

Who Cares? 

Suddenly everyone is talking about 
Framework vs. Symphony; which is 
better? It's the great software face-off, 
and every magazine I pick up has an 
article on the subject. The Ashton-T&te 
and Lotus PR people must have been 
working overtime to gin up all this 
interest. 

As for me, I couldn't care less. I'm 
not likely to use either one. Or see 
below: if I do, I'm illegal. 

The Copy-Protection Plague 

Both Symphony and Framework are 
copy-protected. I'm not about to en- 
trust anything vital to a copy-pro- 

[continued] 



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APRIL 1985 'BYTE 357 



Inquiry 316 



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CHAOS MANOR 




tected program, since, if I do, sure as 
anything the master disk will get 
lunched just after 5:00 p.m. on the Fri- 
day prior to April 1 5th. 

I'm not familiar with Symphony's 
scheme; for some reason, I don't at 
the moment have a copy. I do have 
AshtonTate's new programs: Frame- 
work and dBASE III. They both use 
the Prolok copy-protection system. 
The company that provides it is the 
Vault Corporation, which is owned in 
part by Ashton-T^te. 

The dBASE III documents come 
with an errata sheet that tells you: 
"You have been provided with two 
original system diskettes in your 
dBASE III package. Your SYSTEM 
diskette and its backup are not iden- 
tical to each other. Each diskette has 
a unique identity just like a human 
fingerprint. Therefore, a backup copy 
from one original diskette will not boot 
up a copy you make of the other original 
SYSTEM diskette. 

"When you boot up your system, be 
sure that you are using the same 
original diskette from which you made 
your backup copy." 

There's also a warning: "Never use 
the DISKCOPY command to copy the 
dBASE III files to the new diskettes: 
use the COPY command instead. Use 
of DISKCOPY will result in permanent 
damage to your master diskette." 

It does, too. You are urged by 
Ashton-Tkte to make a "backup" copy 
of your dBASE III system disk; you can 
then use the "backup" for everything, 
except that when you start up dBASE 
III you have to have the original sys- 
tem disk in Drive B until the program 
is satisfied. If you use Diskcopy to 
copy the original system disk, then 
when you try to invoke the program 
your efforts are met with the message 
"unauthorized copy" and failure- 
even though you're using the original 
system disk. I'm not sure how Ashton- 
Tate's people have managed that 
result; one would think that a Copy 
utility couldn't be induced to write on- 
to a source disk— but apparently 
they've done it. 

This makes me wonder: presumably 
they've come up with some way to 
alter the Diskcopy utility; do they then 



358 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 98 



Inquiry 60 



CHAOS MANOR 



restore it when they're done mucking 
about with it? Or have they some 
crazy file that ought not be copied, 
and copying it moves it to a different 
location? I suppose I could figure out 
how they do it, but I can't make myself 
care enough. 

Incidentally, a number of sources 
tell me that in PC-DOS the Copy utili- 
ty is much more reliable than Disk- 
copy Again, I don't know why I find 
some of the "features" of PC-DOS in- 
comprehensible anyway, and I've 
never understood why they don't have 
an obvious equivalent of CP/M's 
SYSGEN utility which puts the oper- 
ating system onto otherwise blank 
disks. 

In any event, the copy-protection 
nonsense has kept me from experi- 
menting with either Framework or 
dBASE III. One of these days, I'll get 
a Copy utility that will let me make 
backups and put dBASE III on a hard 
disk, after which I'll take it seriously, 
or else I'll get around to installing 
demons to defeat the Prolok scheme. 

A demon is a small program that 
sits in high memory, watches what the 
Prolok scheme wants, remembers it, 
and later intercepts the Prolok disk 
calls to give Prolok what it wants to 
hear. Demons are not particularly 
hard to write, and they'll do a good 
job on many copy-protection 
schemes. 

Until I get the copy protection 
defeated, though, those programs go 
back on the shelf; I'll review them 
some time when things are slow. 

Fascinating 

One of my correspondents tells me 
that Prolok works in mysterious ways. 
It tries to conceal itself: 99 percent of 
the Prolok code doesn't exist until the 
program is loaded and running, at 
which time it goes through a complex 
process of decryption that's designed 
to be difficult to trace. 

My correspondent, using PC Trace 
hardware was able to follow what was 
going on— and discovered that Prolok 
has pulled in about 700 bytes, nearly 
10 percent, of the IBM PC's ROM 
(read-only memory) BIOS code per- 
taining to disk-control functions. 



Is this a copyright infringement? 
IBM has certainly taken action against 
other companies making free with its 
ROM BIOS code. 

There's a more serious problem. 

Ashton-T&te has sent a notice that it 
expects to have a copy-protection 
scheme that lets you put its copy- 
protected software onto your hard 
disk. 

I know of no way to "protect" code 
on a hard disk without reformatting one 
or more sectors of that hard disk; or 
doing something equally drastic, like 
hiding deleted data address markers 
or some such. The scheme would in- 
volve doing "secret" things to your 
disk that only the program knows 
about. 

Anyone who lets Ashton-Tkte, or 
Vault, do that to their hard disk has 
got to be out of their ever-loving blue- 
eyed mind! 

Actually, I'm not sure we wouldn't 
be better off if all users took the 
pledge: except for games, we will not 
buy copy-protected software. If a 
significant number of us do that, and 
we can get the other writers to push 
this stand, we can exorcise the copy- 
protection devil once and for all. 

Even if you're not prepared to go 
that far, Lotus 1-2-3 plus Borland In- 
ternational's Sidekick (the $79.95 ver- 
sion that isn't copy-protected) has 
most of the features of Symphony 
and nearly as many as Framework; 
and if you already have Lotus 1-2-3, 
it's a lot cheaper. 

Unlock It 

There's another solution to the copy- 
protection plague: programs that 
enable you to back up copy-protected 
disks. The best general-purpose back- 
up utility we've found for the PC is 
System Backup from Norell Data Sys- 
tems. Be sure to get the latest version; 
the utility changes with the times. 
However, no general-purpose Copy 
scheme will defeat all the different 
copy-protection schemes, and the 
latest version of System Backup will 
not copy dBASE III. 

However, a number of Copy utilities, 
including one for dBASE III, have ap- 

{continued) 




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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 359 



CHAOS MANOR 



peared on public-service electronic 
bulletin boards. If you have a modem, 
time, and patience, you can collect a 
fair number of them for free (except 
for the phone bills). You could also 
buy these from user groups, except 
that user groups put out their free 
software more or less in the chrono- 
logical order they received it, so that 
you'll have to buy a number of disks 
in order to collect all the different 
copy-protection breakers. If you do 
buy a lot of user-group disks, be 
warned; an awful lot of "free" software 
doesn't work very well or do anything 
rationally useful. 

Another alternative is to buy one of 
Workman's utility disks. Barry Work- 
man collects public-domain software, 
tests it (but not extensively), edits the 
documents, and collects the stuff he 
thinks useful onto one disk. At last 
count he had six disks of CP/M utilities 
and at least one disk of MS-DOS stuff. 



His CP/M Disk Six contains over 
200K bytes of stuff. One program, Ed- 
file, is worth the price of the whole lot. 
Edfile allows you to edit disk files; you 
can go in and change things, such as 
long, boring messages. (It is probably 
illegal, and certainly unethical, to use 
Edfile to remove copyright notices 
and serial numbers.) Edfile combines 
the best features of Spat and Duu 
(earlier disk-file editing programs) with 
some of the good features of DDT 
and Ed. I'd think anyone with an 8-bit 
(or 8/16) CP/M system would want this 
one. 

Workman's MS-DOS Disk One con- 
tains all the copy-protection informa- 
tion he has found recently; some ex- 
ecutable programs and some docu- 
mentary files that suggest patches to 
remove copy protection. About half 
the programs on the disk are specific 
to the IBM PC and 100 percent com- 
patibles; the rest are generic MS-DOS. 



Do understand that most of these 
programs are available free if you look 
hard enough for them. 

A Z80 MODULA-2 

Workman has recently concluded an 
agreement whereby he will be dealer 
for a Zurich programmer who has de- 
veloped a native-code Modula-2 com- 
piler for Z80 CP/M machines. 

It is a four-pass compiler: that is, it's 
pretty slow. At present it has no float- 
ing point, open arrays, or built-in error 
procedures (that is: when an error is 
detected, an error-message file has to 
be called in to tell you what hap- 
pened). There's no procedure type— 
i.e., you cannot pass a procedure 
name as a parameter in a procedure 
call. 

If you're not a programmer, you'll 
hate the manual; but all the informa- 
tion you really need is in there, if you 
know what to look for. 



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3*0 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 73 



Inquiry 1 79 



CHAOS MANOR 



This is a programmer's Modula-2. 
Unless you're a fanatic, it's not some- 
thing to learn the language from. 
However, it is Modula-2 for the Z80, 
and it does compile executable pro- 
grams. The Zurich people are working 
on adding the floats, error proce- 
dures, and procedure types (in that 
order). 

Recommended for hackers only. 

SI Exists 

For over a year I've heard stories 
about the SI operating system. It is 
supposed to be totally portable multi- 
tasking and multiuser, and better and 
friendlier than UNIX. It will contain the 
perfect programming language, en- 
able but not require virtual memory 
and memory management, control 
any computer, right any wrong, dream 
the impossible dream . . . 

SI was said to have been created by 
a Princeton faculty member and 



would be marketed by Multi Solutions 
Inc. (MSI) of Lawrenceville, New Jersey. 
Frankly, it sounded like a scam, and 
my views weren't changed when I 
found an MSI booth at a show last 
year and was told they didn't have a 
demonstration because their com- 
puter was lost on a truck or some- 
thing. They've since told me they 
don't really like to ship computers 
around to shows because the ma- 
chines often don't do well after trans- 
portation; but that wasn't what I heard 
at the time. 

Also, MSI's literature seemed out- 
rageous. They claim: "Only SI Ven- 
dors and Users will survive the next 
revolution." They offer a huge range of 
products, languages, and compilers 
that I am certain do not exist. Then 
I met one of the company's represen- 
tatives. He's one of those chaps who 
gets too close to you and talks 50 
miles a second. He promises any- 



thing, and you don't even get Arpege. 
After five minutes with him, I was sure 
it was all a scam. Just to be safe, I sent 
a message through the net asking if 
anyone had ever seen SI in operation. 
None had, but some had met the 
sales chap who so negatively im- 
pressed me; and everyone who had 
met him, including serior CompuPro 
officials, came to the same conclu- 
sion. SI was vaporware and likely to 
remain so. 

We were wrong. SI exists. 

The SI operating system was dis- 
played in a small booth down at the 
far end of the main hall at COMDEX. 
The instant I came around I was 
seized; Robert Knight, formerly of 
Princeton's computer laboratories, is 
an old fan of my books and columns 
as well as the creator of SI, which he 
had running on an IBM Instruments 
CS9000 (the processor is a 68000); 

[continued] 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 3*1 



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362 BYTE • APRIL 1985 Inquiry 402 



CHAOS MANOR 



that's a machine I'm not familiar with. 
There was also a Stride 440 (former- 
ly Sage IV also a 68000 machine), and 
I'm told they have a CompuPro 68000 
back in New Jersey. 

I got a demonstration. Of course, 
you can't see much at a show; there 
are constant interruptions. Thus, I still 
don't know a lot about SI. It certainly 
runs. It has features not present in 
CP/M 68000; features I'd very much 
like to have. It's said to be highly por- 
table, and thus soon able to run on 
the 80286 and 32016 chips as well as 
the 68000. I'd like to see Knight get 
together with a good hardware house 
that produces machines running with 
a wide variety of processor chips and 
implement this properly. It just might 
be the wave of the future. Lord knows 
I'd be glad to learn one multitasking 
multiuser operating system that I 
could use on a lot of different ma- 
chines. I'm not very keen on UNIX; at 



the moment, the up-and-coming 
operating system seems to be Con- 
current DOS, and I don't know when 
they'll have that for 68000-based 
machines. 

Knight claims a lot for SI. The MSI 
ad sheet gives prices for FORTRAN, 
C Pascal BASIC, etc., etc., but they 
didn't have them at COMDEX; MSI 
claims Pascal, FORTRAN, and C by 
the spring of 1985, but the only lan- 
guage they have so far is MSI's own 
SL, a kind of stripped-down Pascal. 
Until they have languages, SI isn't go- 
ing anywhere. 

I liked Robert Knight. He was 
perfectly honest with me on every 
question I asked, made no claims he 
wasn't ready to demonstrate, and 
thoroughly understood my skep- 
ticism. They're going to send a copy 
they claim will run on my CompuPro 
68000 system. When I have it, we'll 
see. I don't do reviews until I have it 



The world is 



ready for another 
operating system. 



running here at Chaos Manor. 

Knight claims to have SI 90 percent 
finished. I suspect the rest will take 
longer to hack than he thinks. (Alex 
repeats an old motto: the first 90 per- 
cent of the work takes 50 percent of 
the time, and the last 10 percent takes 
the other 50 percent of the time.) 
However, Knight just might be able to 
bring it off. If he does, the potential 
is high. The world is obviously ready 
for another operating system; UNIX 
isn't going to do the job (it's a Thurs- 
day night so I can say that). Digital 
Research is in the doldrums. MS-DOS 

{continued) 



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Inquiry 80 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 363 



CHAOS MANOR 



is boring. The Modula-2 operating sys- 
tem is exciting, but it's taking forever 
to get the operating system (as op- 
posed to the language) implemented 
on anything but Lilith (a machine de- 
signed especially to run Modula-2). 
Whether SI can win market share is 
open to question, but the market is 
wide open for something portable 



that will support lots of languages. 
1 reached the MSI booth just as they 
were announcing a very large ($40 
million or so) development deal with 
a Japanese software consortium; that 
surely ought to be enough to keep 
Knight and his former student John 
Little working until they get things 
perfected, and it shows that some big- 



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money people have confidence in 
them. Meanwhile, they're supposed to 
send me a copy, and Knight is work- 
ing on a Modula-2 compiler to run 
under SI. I'm not holding my breath 
until MSI delivers, but I wish Knight 
well 

The Network Jungle 

If you want computers to talk to each 
other, you could have problems 
because there are so many different 
networking systems. Corvus has 
Omninet. NCR bought the Corvus 
Omninet chip set, but of course its PC- 
to-PC net isn't compatible with Cor- 
vus Omninet. Corvus's network for 
Macintoshes won't talk to regular 
Omninet, although a planned higher- 
price adapter is coming Real Soon 
Now. 

Meanwhile, CompuPro— oops, 
Viasyn— has opted for Datapoint's 
Arcnet. AT&T has a PC-to-PC-to-mini- 
to-mainframe network system devel- 
oped largely by Locus of Santa 
Monica. Ethernet strides along, al- 
though the $1000 per connection 
hobbles it a bit. IBM has a local-area 
network that isn't really a network at 
all, but promises two more nets- 
details not clear to me— within two 
years. 

If there's anything like a hardware 
standard developing out there I 
haven't seen it. The only networking 
system I have any familiarity with at 
all is Corvus's; that really will let you 
network Apples and IBM PCs, and in 
theory you could also network S-100 
systems like CompuPro, except that 
Corvus has stopped making and sup- 
porting the S-100 network card. 

Viasyn makes very good use of Arc- 
net; I've seen as many as five different 
kinds of CompuPro systems, with a 
total of 16 different computers, net- 
worked in a very smooth system for 
shifting files and programs back and 
forth. 

The moral of the story is simple. 
Unless you're a guru (in which case 
you don't need my advice), don't get 
involved in networking until you have 
to. If you need to network some sys- 
tems, try hard to stay with one kind 

(continued) 



±1 



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Inquiry 85 






CHAOS MANOR 



of net and one brand of computer; if 
you have to connect a number of dif- 
ferent kinds of machines, gulp hard 
and hire an expert. 

The Great Software Purge 

They haven't begun tearing off the top 
of my house, but they'll start when the 
rain stops. That means the attic must 
be emptied. Which means grief. I've 
lived here in Chaos Manor for 20 
years, and it's a big house. Whenever 
we accumulated too much junk, I 
would go up and floor another sec- 
tion of the attic, briefly creating lots 
and lots of room; but eventually that 
would fill and I'd have it to do again. 
Last time there was nothing left to 
floor. We have managed to fill 2500 
square feet to a depth of three to four 
feet with every conceivable kind of 
stuff from wedding pictures to old 
textbooks to unpublished manu- 
scripts to research notes on articles 



and books I wrote a dozen years ago. 
To make it worse, the downstairs is 
now filled with more stuff that would 
have been put in the attic if there were 
any room for it. 

It all has to go somewhere else. 

Fortunately I have a small pickup 
truck, and it doesn't cost that much 
to rent a large (20 by 30) public 
storage locker; a couple of frantic 
weekends filled the local school's 
paper drive bins and half-filled the 
locker; and then came the moment of 
truth. 

Software flows in here like a river. 
Understand, I'm not complaining. I'd 
have nothing to write about without 
it, and I'm still excited when I open a 
package with something new and neat 
and different in it, Moreover, I feel 
some obligation to the people who 
sent it, particularly to the small out- 
fits that can't afford advertising. When 
software first comes in, I try to figure 



out if it does anything interesting. 
More on that in a moment; but the 
bottom line is that if it doesn't look 
particularly interesting it goes into a 
holding file that tends to work like a 
first-in/last-out queue. It's supposed to 
be first-in/first-out, and it is as long as 
there's shelf space available; but even- 
tually the shelves fill, the piles start, 
and we never reach the bottom of the 
pile. 

Clearly, what's needed is more soft- 
ware shelf space— so 1 made some. 
Ruthlessly. I went through the Great 
Software Dumps; shelves, piles, every- 
where. If it's dated prior to the spring 
of 1984 and I don't use it, it went. That 
wasn't universally true. I found a few 
things that looked sufficiently interest- 
ing to warrant keeping; but the rest 
went. The disks were stripped out and 
thrown into a box with a large 
magnet, and the documents were 

[continued] 




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366 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 192 



noDlr; i i n 1 h 



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CHAOS MANOR 



bagged for the paper drive. The hun- 
dreds of disks that are involved will 
eventually be bulk-erased and 
donated to a school. 

Understand, I didn't like doing this. 
Some of the stuff was nothing more 
than early versions and presented no 
problems— how many copies of Word- 
Star 1.6 do you really need, anyway? 



There were programs dating back to 
1979 in there. Some was from com- 
panies no longer in business; those 
deserving their fate gave me no pains. 
Throwing out other stuff created emo- 
tional storms. There were programs 
that represented a lot of work and 
hope for small would-be publishers; 
people who need reviews because 



What do you get when you cross 
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Check out bulletin 
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With the Multi- 
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CompuServe's 
DemoPak, a free two- 
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their service, and up to 
seven more free hours 
if you subscribe. You 
also get a $50 credit 
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business newsletter 
service. 

Features & Price? 

Of course, the 
MultiModem gives you 
automatic dial, answer, 
and disconnect. Gives 
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to support popular 
communications soft- 
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Crosstalk, Data Cap- 
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Inquiry 274 



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they can't afford to advertise, lb them 
I apologize. 

What To Do Now 

The upshot is that if you have soft- 
ware you want me to look at and you 
haven't sent anything since, say July 
of 1984, you'd do well to send your 
latest copies. Whether I do anything 
with it will depend on a number of 
factors, many of them out of your con- 
trol: if your program is Yet Another 
Example of a program I just received 
five versions of, you'd better have a 
snappy cover letter explaining why 
yours is best. 

If you have the address of Chaos 
Manor, you can try sending it here 
and hope the moat monsters don't 
get at it. Otherwise, send review 
materials to BYTE, but be sure to mark 
it to my attention; and understand 
that sending it to me does not get your 
software to the BYTE New Products 
Review Editor. You must send two 
copies, one to me, one to the editorial 
people, if you want to be considered 
for both my column and a review in 
the magazine. BYTE selects what will 
be reviewed in the rest of the book 
by rules unknown to me; one thing is 
certain, they don't consult me about 
what they choose. Once in a while the 
editors in Peterborough will direct my 
attention to something interesting 
that I haven't seen, but otherwise I 
don't consult them either. 

BYTE returns unreviewed software. 
I'd go broke doing that, so I don't. If 
I like a program and it does some- 
thing I need done, I'll use it until 
something better comes along. If I like 
it but don't have any need for that 
capability, I'll sometimes ask the pub- 
lisher if I can send it along to some- 
one who does have a need for it. 
Otherwise it goes into The System, 
sometimes to emerge when I'm stuck 
for something to write about, some- 
times to molder until the next Great 
Purge. 

So Long Has It Been? 

Before I get to what I think is inter- 
esting software, I need to attack a 
complaint. 

(continued) 
Inquiry 27 — ► 



INTRODUCING ANTHROCART. 

WORKSPACE FOR THE HUMAN RACE. 

AnthroCart is a serious workstation. Designed specifically with your uses 
in mind, the AnthroCart takes up little space, yet expands to grow right 
along with you and your system. Adjustable shelves, swing -out baskets and 
other modular components give you the tlexibility you need. 

AnthroCart is also a real beast ot burden, tough enough to support up 
to 150 lbs., yet mobile enough to roll next door or down the street. And its 
durable steel-base construction stands up to both human and machine 
(so much so, we offer a five-year, unconditional guarantee!). 

To order your AnthroCart, or to get more information, call toll free: 

1-800-547-4000, Dept. 501 

In Oregon, call (503) 684-3000, Dept 501 
VAR and dealer inquiries welcome. 




AnthroCart shown 
with printer basket 
option 

Basic AnthroCart 
list price $495 

Also available 
in Oak Finish. 




f?rn,irk ;inri Aril 



jfjislorerl trademark of Anthro Corporation 



ANThRO 

A subsidiary of 
TEKTRONfX. INC 



Anthro Corporation 
3221 NWYeon Street 
Portland. OR 97210 
TWX (910) 333 6401 



CHAOS MANOR 



I have several— well, no more than 
four— recent letters taking me to task 
for concentrating on big, expensive 
machines to the neglect of smaller 
and more affordable ones. "You're 
too snooty to write about Kaypro, 
which must be beneath your notice,'' 
one letter says. Another reader 
believes I ignore CP/M systems, 
"which are really the machines for 
the rest of us' who can't afford the 
Macintosh." I haven't, he says, re- 
viewed a new CP/M program for years. 

My first reaction was a smile, but 
then I looked back through recent col- 
umns, and by gollies I have tended to 
write mostly about Mac, and my Com- 
puPro (oops, Viasyn) 8/16, and the 
Sage (oops, Stride Micro) 68000 sys- 
tems. Not exclusively, but I suppose 
a CP/M enthusiast could accuse me of 
neglecting 8080 and Z80 stuff. That's 
ironic; it was only a few years ago that 
\nfdWorld and other computer 
magazines were quoting me as hav- 
ing "pronounced CP/M the standard 



for the micro industry"; while nearly 
all the people associated with Kaypro 
credit me as having given a big sales 
boost to their "Chevrolet" (I com- 
pared the Osborne to the VW, Kaypro 
to the Chevrolet, and Otrona Attache 
to the BMW); while 1 am to this day 
one of the very few columnists in non- 
Atari magazines to review Vincent 
Cate's little Atari Connection that lets 
you run CP/M on an Atari 800; and I 
regularly recommend an Atari 800 (or 
800-compatible machine), Rana disk 
drives, and Wico joystick as a good 
youngster's system they won't grow 
out of too fast. 

It's true that I don't much care for 
the Commodore machines (even 
though there are, I guess, more of 
them than anything else except the 
doorstop Sinclair); but that's because 
I do a lot of writing, and I don't much 
care for any system that uses a tele- 
vision screen or otherwise displays 
fuzzy and shaky letters. 

CP/M systems are a different matter. 



Items Discussed 




Calendar/I . . . . 


. . .$150 


SI Operating System.. 


$250-$950 


Clear Systems 




Multi Solutions Inc. one-time fee 


607 Ashland Ave., Suite A 




660 Whitehead Rd. 




Santa Monica, CA 90401 




Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 




(213) 394-7740 




(609) 695-1337 




CP/M Utilities 


.$32.50 
...$239 


Symphony 

Lotus Development Corp. 


$695 


WRITE 


Workman and Associates 




161 First St. 




112 Marion Ave. 




Cambridge, MA 02142 




Pasadena, CA 91106 




(617) 492-7171 




(818) 796-4401 












System Backup 


. . .$49.95 


DBASE III 


. . .$695 


Norell Data Systems 




Framework 


...$695 


POB 70127 




Ashton-T&te 




Los Angeles, CA 90010 




10150 West Jefferson Blvd. 




(213) 257-2026 




Culver City, CA 90230 








(213) 204-5570 




The Word Plus 


$150 






Oasis Systems Inc. 




Prolok 


. . $8.49 


7907 Ostrow St., Suite F 




Vault Corp. 




San Diego, CA 92111 




2649 Tbwnsgate Rd, Suite 500 


(619) 279-5711 




Westlake Village, CA 91361 








(800) 445-0193 








(800) 821-8638 (California) 









A good Z80 CP/M system can do an 
awful lot; indeed, I'm writing this on 
a Z80. My accounting system (which 
I wrote in Compiling CBASIC); The 
Word Plus, still the best spelling 
checker on the market bar none; 
WRITE, the word-processing program 
I use to create nearly everything I do 
from books to these columns to my 
business and personal correspon- 
dence; the logbook program, and the 
index program I use to organize my 
log; Calendar/1, which organizes my 
schedule; every one of these pro- 
grams runs on an 8-bit CP/M machine. 

There are many bargains in good 
CP/M machines, and the Kaypro, with 
its bundled software, is certainly one 
of them. Three writing partners: John 
F. Carr, Dean Ing, and Roland Green 
have recently started using Kaypro 
systems, and a fourth, David Gerrold, 
now writes a column for the Kaypro 
magazine Profiles. They're all quite 
happy. Norman Spinrad loves his 
Kaypro 10. 

I've never had a Morrow, but I hear 
good things about it. Barry Workman 
is very fond of his Lobo. The Epson 
QX-10 remains overpriced, but it is 
probably the cheapest machine you 
can sit down and begin using with lit- 
tle to no instruction, and if you add 
SemiDisk's RAM-disk board to the 
QX-10 it takes a lot of the sting out of 
its slow disk operations. I still use the 
wonderful little Otrona Attache on 
trips, but, alas, the Otrona company 
seems to have made some serious 
mistakes. If they'd worked as hard to 
promote the Attache as the BMW of 
8-bit systems and continued to add 
bundled software to their already im- 
pressive package of programs, they 
might well have made themselves a 
profitable niche. 

When all is said and done, though, 
there isn't very much exciting new soft- 
ware being written for Z80 machines. 
The reason is easy enough to see. The 
Z80 has the inherent limitation that it 
cannot directly address more than 
64 K bytes of memory You can come 
up with ways to get at more memory, 
but, alas, there never developed a 
standard way to do that; the result is 
that nearly everyone tried a different 



370 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



CHAOS MANOR 



method, big-memory software devel- 
oped for one kind of hardware 
wouldn't run on anything else, debug- 
ging was costly. The market base isn't 
large enough, not compared to the 
IBM PC or the Apple II {although 
many Apple lis do a splendid job of 
running CP/M programs; it only re- 
quires the right hardware addition, 
something like an Applicard or the 
Digital Research Gold Card). 

There's still some solid progress be- 
ing made. Every now and then, really 
good CP/M programs appear. Some, 
like WRITE, are really excellent— but 
they're seldom marketed by big con- 
cerns willing to spend lots of money 
on promotion. Many CP/M programs 
hang around for a couple of years, 
some never to be seen again, others 
to reappear in the public domain. 

CP/M systems are adequate for 
many purposes and will be for years; 
but, alas, the micro industry is mov- 
ing toward new standards of ade- 
quacy that will eventually, relegate 
8-bit CP/M computers to low-cost 
entry-level systems— or relics, like my 
neighbor's 1957 Studebaker. 

So What Is Interesting 
Software? 

Just at the moment I'm in a dilemma. 
I have yet to see any computer sys- 
tem whatever that I would rather sit 
in front of for days on end than Zeke 
II, my CompuPro letter-series Z80. 
The reason is simple. Zeke II doesn't 
have a terminal. Instead, he has a 
memory-mapped video board, one of 



the very last of the boards from the 
days of Lee Felsenstein and the Sol 
computer. His video output goes onto 
a 1 5-inch white-on-black Hitachi high- 
resolution monitor that sits about 30 
inches from my schnoz. The letters 
are big enough to read from across 
the room. 

The keyboard is an ancient Archive 
keyboard. Archive has so thoroughly 
vanished that I can't find even a for- 
warding address— but Larry Niven and 
I have about four spare copies of their 
Hall-effect keyboards (no switch con- 
tacts; the keys may last forever), and 
except for the new Wico Smartline 
keyboard with its wonderful trackball, 
I haven't seen any keyboard anywhere 
that I'd even consider trading the 
Archive for. 

The text editor is WRITE, which 
works only under 8-bit CP/M. Again, 
I have nearly every text editor known 
to humanity, and I have never found 
one better for just wailing away when 
you want to create lots of text— which 
is, after all, what I do for a living. 
There are lots of better programming 
editors, including WordStar (sort of 
everyone's second-choice editor, isn't 
it?), WordMaster (nearly neglected by 
MicroPro), Superwriter, and the 
EMACS-like editors sold by Mark of 
the Unicorn; but for just turning out 
10,000 words of text in a couple of 
days, I've never heard of anything bet- 
ter than WRITE. 

All my printing, spelling checking, 
communications with BYTE (hurrah! 
the BYTEnet for authors seems reli- 



There's solid progress 
being made: every 
now and then 
really good CP/M 
programs appear 

able lately; we've had some problems 
with the local New Hampshire phone 
system), accounting, check writing, 
and such like are done on larger sys- 
tems, particularly the new (not yet 
named) Viasyn 8/16. 

WRITE will, of course, work on a 
System 8/16, and if need be I can 
probably hack up a BIOS that lets the 
Viasyn 8/16 or its companion Shirley 
(CompuPro 10, now I suppose the 
Viasyn 10) communicate through the 
VDM (video-display module) memory- 
map video board and the Archive key- 
board. It wouldn't be easy. Maybe I 
can talk someone else into doing it. 
Failing that, I can keep Zeke II and use 
the new Viasyn networking system to 
connect up. Either way, I'll get to keep 
WRITE and my big screen. 

Alas, that's no longer quite good 
enough. 

It isn't that there's a better program 
for text creation than WRITE. It's that 
WRITE doesn't do a lot of the fancier 
things that technical books demand. 
The spelling checker is external; not 

{continued) 



"BOOT STRAP" YOUR WAY INTO 
EXPERT SYSTEMS 



u 



PROLOG 



+apes 



iD-iimicro- 
' [PROLOG 

An interactive PROLOG system specialty 
developed for use on micro computers. This 
powerful implementation is available for 16 bit 
8088/86 micros using CP/M 86 or 
MS DOS/PC DOS such as the IBM PC or 
IBM compatibles and 8 bit Z80 micros using 
CP/M 80. From US $195.00 



rnrri sigma— 
HMJPRQLOG 

A version of PROLOG specially developed 
for use on the larger memory 68000 machines 
as well as mini computers under the Unix 
operating system. Sharing many of the 
features found on LPA micro-PROLOG, this 
upward compatible language makes full use of 
the power of Unix. 

From US $695.00 



With Products from Logic Programming Assocs. 



apes — Augmented PROLOG for Expert 
Systems — is an Expert System shell 
developed by Logic Based Systems Ltd., in 
close association with Imperial College and 
Logic Programming Associates Ltd., to 
complement LPA micro-PROLOG and LPA 
sigma-PROLOG. It greatty facilitates the 
development of Expert Systems. 

For informat.oncontact:- ***« from US ^S.OO 

NORTH AMERICA 

DtS Programming Logic Systems Inc, , 

rm 31 Crescent Drive, Mlrford.CT 06460, U.S.A. 

Tel: (203) 877 7988 
REST OF THE WORLD 



Logic Programming Associates Ltd., Dept. BY/1 
lOBumtwood Close, London SW18 3JU 
I Tel: 01 -874 0350 



Inquiry 440 for North America. Inquiry 441 for International. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 371 



Inquiry 31 5 




The universal, super-efficient 

Lisp for PC-DOS, MS-DOS, 

CP/M-86andCP/M-80 

systems. 

Waltz Lisp is a very powerful and complete 
implementation of Lisp. It is similar to Franz (the 
Lisp running under Unix), and is substantially 
compatible with MacLisp and other mainframe 
Lisps. 



f Ultra fast 1 ln 'dependent tests, Waltz Lisp 
I UWTliWL J was up tQ tW enty<!) times faster 
than competing microcomputer Lisps 



( cj,™ i n lisn V he inter P ret e r c a n directly 
I Egfl I0 USB ) load program files created 
with any ASCII text editor, Full debugging and 
error handling facilities are available at all times 
No debuggers to link or load. 



f Prartiral ^ R an dom *' le access, binary file 

I • J support, and extensive string 

operations make Waltz Lisp suitable for general 
programming. A text-file difference program and 
other utilities are included in the package. 

( r .I I :„ n > Functions of type lambda (expr). 
I & P* J nlambda (fexpr). lexpr, macro. 

Splicing and non-splicing character macros. Full 
suite of mappers, iterators, etc. Long integers (up 
to 61 1 digits) Fast list sorting using user defined 
comparison predicates. Built-in prettypnnting and 
formatting facilities Over 250 functions in all 



f Flexible transparent (yet programmable) 
I nextaiB - J handling of undefined function 



I Superbly documented. 



references allows large programs to reside partially 
on disk at run time. Optional automatic loading of 
initialization file User control over all aspects of 
the system Assembly language interface 

, Each aspect of the 

interpreter is des- 
cribed in detail. The 300+ page manual includes 
an exhaustive index and hundreds of illustrative 
examples. 

Order Waltz Utp now and receive fmeour 

PROLOG Interpreter 

Clog Pnriflj is a tiny {but very complete) Prolog 
implementation written entirely in tftttz lisp, in 
addition to the full source code, the package 
includes a 50 page Cteg manual 

16-bit versions require DOS 2 x or CP/M-86 and 90K 
RAM (more recommended) 
Z-80 version requires CP/M 
2 x or 3 x and 48K RAM 
minimum Waltz Lisp runs on 
hundreds of different com- 
puter models and is available 
in all disk formats 

« 169* 

'Manual only s 30 {refund 
able with order) Foreign orders add s 5 for surface mail. 
s 20 for airmail COD add s 3 Apple CP/M hard sector, 
and 3" formats add s 15 MC/Visa accepted 
^ For further information or to order call ^g^ 

- 1-800-LIP-4000 dept 20 

In Oregon and outside USA call 1-503-684-3000 

■^ /Tfc 1 5930 sw Colon y Pl • 

\J I ** Portland, OR 97224 

l^ROW'ODE 




ilSTblRSATlOSAL* 



CHAOS MANOR 



I don't really 



care to be 



tied to the 



future of UNIX. 



a fatal flaw, because Word Plus is fast, 
but minorly inconvenient. There's no 
good bibliography or footnote capa- 
bility. The index capability that Peter 
has worked out is all right, but it is 
pretty slow and hard for me to use. 
There's no on-board sort facility, no 
calculation, no spreadsheet. No 
graphics and no graphs. No explicit 
outline (idea processor) system, al- 
though WRITE does have features 
that, coupled with 500K bytes of RAM 
disk, work about as well. WRITE is 
great for letters and manuscripts; it 
will do a fair job on documents, but 
not a superb one. 

Worse, there's nothing like Sidekick 
on Zeke II, and I have just got to have 
that program before my little green 
telephone index completely disinte- 
grates. Sidekick lets me keep notes on 
line, calculate, look up phone num- 
bers—not all the word-mashing things 
I want to do, but some of them. 

Meanwhile, Tony Pietsch's Viasyn 
S-lOO PCompatible video board, 
which lets you fool the System 8/16 
into thinking it's a 98 percent compati- 
ble PClone (and has a jack on the 
back into which you can plug the 
Wico Smartline keyboard) is now in 
engineering test; I'll probably have 
one about the time you read this. I'll 
also have, probably, an extremely fast 
80286 processor running the system 
and Z80 slave (SPUZ) boards. 

I've no trouble translating WRITE 
files into WordStar (or any other kind) 
of files; thus I can, for as long as I 
want, continue to use WRITE to create 
text, pass it to some other text editor, 
and do extensive word processing 
there. I'll hang on for a while. But I am 
looking for some generic solutions; 
something I can begin to learn in the 
expectation that my time won't be 



wasted. That may be one big inte- 
grated program— but I doubt it. More 
likely it's going to be a whole set of 
small utilities. 

UNIX, of course, has a whole set of 
such utilities built into the operating 
system. The UNIX editor is lousy, but 
how long will it take a good program- 
mer to do the functional equivalent of 
WRITE in C? A long time, if it's done 
as cleverly as Tony Pietsch did it in 
8080 assembler; he kept the code 
amazingly compact. However, the 
8088 and upwards family of chips can 
directly address plenty of memory; 
there's no need to keep the code so 
small. 

1 don't really care to be tied to the 
future of UNIX. 

We'll see. Anyway, that's some of 
what I find interesting just now. I sup- 
pose it will change one day. . . 

Winding Down 

I'm fading fast. Roberta tells me she 
has the bug, and worse, so does the 
housekeeper. It promises to be an in- 
teresting week. 

The books of the month have 
nothing to do with computers. 1 read 
The Roman Empire by Colin Wells (Stan- 
ford University Press). He disputes 
several of Gibbons's conclusions. Sec- 
ond, The Great Siege, Malta 1565 by 
Ernie Bradford (Penguin). Finally Sky- 
walking, The Life and Films of GEORGE 
LUCAS by Dave Pollock. If you like the 
subjects, those are good books. 
Otherwise, forget it. 

I've recently received three ex- 
amples of the new Osborne Paper- 
back Software Library, all for the PC 
and "close compatibles"; alas, no time 
even to open them. I was somewhat 
impressed with the packaging. 

Now to collapse. ■ 



\erry Pournelle welcomes readers com- 
ments and opinions. Send a self- 
addressed, stamped envelope to \erry 
Pournelle. do BYTE Publications. POB 
372, Hancock. NH 03449. Please put 
your address on the letter as well as on 
the envelope. Due to the high volume of 
letters, \erry cannot guarantee a personal 
reply. 



372 B Y T E 



APRIL 1985 



CHAOS MANOR MAIL 



I get a lot of letters, for which I thank 
you all. Please don't stop writing. How- 
ever: I can't answer all the letters 1 
receive, either in the column or in- 
dividually. I can't even answer all the 
interesting letters. Moreover, even if 1 
select a letter for a reply, there may not 
be room in BYTE. I have tried in past 
times to send a copy of the proposed 
reply to everyone whose letter 1 
selected, whether or not a self- 
addressed, stamped envelope was 
enclosed. 

I can't do that any longer. If you can't 
send postage, then you can't; but ad- 
dressing envelopes is eating up too 
much time Please? 



Borland Complaints 

Dear Jerry 

I am writing because, although I believe 
that the phenomenon represented by 
Turbo Pascal and Borland is all to the 
good, 1 don't think the euphoria spread 
by you, among others, is altogether 
justified. My complaints follow: 

The installation program for Tlirbo 
Pascal is enough to drive people like my- 
self with a graphics card and green screen 
blind. The program tries to write in color 
and succeeds only in being illegible. There 
appears to be no way to turn this off. The 
installation program is a nuisance to use 
anyway. If you want to change the twenty- 
third item, you have to go through the 
previous 22. The defaults on Borland's 
editor make you use WordStar-type con- 
trols and I detest WordStar, so the installa- 
tion was a fairly lengthy and unpleasant 
procedure. 

The spreadsheet supplied as a sample 
program is useless. There appears to be 
no way to change a cell into a formula cell, 
which is the whole point of a spreadsheet. 
There is certainly no way documented, 
and after reading the code for a half hour. 
1 still could see no way. I suppose it is 
churlish to complain about a free pro- 
gram, but anyway it is worth no more than 
I paid for it. 

Nowhere is it mentioned in the ads that 
Sidekick is supplied on a double-sided 
copy-protected disk. So my copy of it is 



useless to me. I can't use it, and I can't 
even take it to my office and copy it onto 
single-sided disks. 

Why does Borland International add a 
$15 charge for foreign orders? And why 
won't they accept credit-card orders from 
them? Other software houses accept 
credit-card orders on foreign orders and 
either add a small charge for the extra 
postage or don't even bother to do that. 
For example. Laboratory Microsystems 
treats foreign customers exactly the same 
as domestic. I actually purchased my 
Borland programs from Micro-Way Inc., 
which added a small postage charge. 

You have often written about absurd 
software licenses. There is none worse 
than Borland's, which claims it is "illegal" 
to use their software without returning the 
license agreement. I have no intention of 
returning it under that kind of threat. On 
the other hand, I do feel bound not to give 
copies away 

Michael Barr 
Montreal, Quebec Canada 

Well, the "license agreement" is a bit 
silly; I've commented before about the 
absurdity of trying to cover your flanks 
with both license and copyright since the 
rights conflict. Oh, well 

I've had other outlanders complain 
about the extra $15; Philippe Kahn of 
Borland tells me that it costs him that 
much to fill out ail the paperwork in order 
to export this high-tech item; and he can't 
afford to pay that himself. I doubt that 
makes you feel better, but I have no 
remedy. 

I still think Turbo Pascal is one of the 
best bargains in the business.— Jerry 

Maybe It Was Dracula 

Dear Jerry 

Your comments about the origin of bug 
and le cafard in the October BYTE (page 
330} were very interesting. 

I've often heard the story about the 
dead moth in the relay. It could have hap- 
pened! But I've also wondered why faulty 
computers couldn't be "debatted." 

In late 1962 or early 1963 the IBM 7010 
computer was undergoing engineering 
tests before being released to production. 



It was being run 24 hours a day, seven 
days a week, in an attempt to make it fail 
(it did, numerous times, and fixes were in- 
corporated in the design). Although I was 
one of the engineers on the design team, 
fortunately I didn't draw late-shift test duty. 
Therefore, I was among those who 
chuckled one morning when we read in 
the logbook that the guys on the grave- 
yard shift had spent some time dodging 
a bat flitting around the machine room. 
We figured they hadn't been getting 
enough sleep. 

Their reputations were restored several 
weeks later when the machine was being 
dismantled for shipment to the manufac- 
turing plant or someplace. Inside the 
power supply where it had apparently 
been electrocuted, was the rapidly decom- 
posing corpse of a bat. 

Wallace B. Riley 
San Francisco, CA 

I have heard Grace Hopper tell the 
story of the first bug— they actually 
Scotch-taped the moth into the log- 
book—but I have never heard of bats in 
the computer before! 

When I was an undergraduate, a small 
bat flew into my room and made a home 
inside an old Zenith mahogany high-arch 
vacuum-tube radio my landlady fur- 
nished with the room. He— I think he, al- 
though with bats it's hard to tell— lived 
there all winter, eating mostly milk and 
table scraps and sometimes flying out the 
window, presumably to hunt insects. 
Come spring he left me. 

If my bat would live in a radio, I sup- 
pose another might find a computer 
quite cozy . . —Jerry 

Mac and Lisa 

Dear Jerry 

I just have to add my two cents to the 
MacDebate. As a computer user who is 
a systems engineer, a systems program- 
mer, and a student of psychology (in par- 
ticular ergonomics), I feel well qualified to 
comment on the subject of user-friendli- 
ness. However, the problem with the Mac 
(and with Lisa for that matter) is mostly 
one of nomenclature. 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 373 



CHAOS MANOR MAIL 



It would be stretching the common 
definition of computer to call a Wang word 
processor or an arcade video game a 
computer, but they sure do need to com- 
pute to do their jobs. So it is with Mac and 
Lisa; they compute, but they are not com- 
puters. Perhaps we should call them 
productivity-enhancement tools. 

As a programmer and engineer, I expect 
a lot of my machines. I expect them to do 
exactly what I want in exactly the way I 
want them to. Give me a twelfth-genera- 
tion computer that reads my mind and for- 
mats output to my liking and I'll be happy. 
Until then, I'll probably program my own 
applications when I have the time. That is 
the main reason I don't like Mac and Lisa. 
They are not programmable devices. They 
don't seem to be designed for that. 

If one accepts that these instances of the 
class electronica are not computers, then 
many of the complaints about them 
become moot. After all, I don't often 
worry that my secretary's word processor 
doesn't run BASIC or that my phone- 
answering machine doesn't understand 
the CP/M operating system, There is still 



the issue of friendliness, however. 

My hands-on use of these machines has 
been limited to a demo, but it is enough 
to convince me that Apple will never make 
a decent keyboard. I can hear them now, 
"But with the mouse. . . ." Unfortunately, 
my experience with Apple mice has con- 
vinced me that I can generalize my last 
comment to include all physical input 
devices. A touch-typist keeps track of eight 
fingers and two thumbs on 50 keys on a 
typewriter, more on a terminal or other 
keyboard device. Does Apple really think 
that two buttons and two fingers would 
be confusing? It would also be nice if the 
mouse had enough mass to let you know 
it was there; it's just too cheap for my taste. 

That's all I have to say that I haven't seen 
in print already. Two things in parting. First, 
you might be interested to know that this 
is being composed on my HP 110 using 
Memomaker and will be printed at my of- 
fice in the morning using an IBM PC XT 
as a print spooler; I love this machine! Sec- 
ond, I came in during the second act; 
could you print a Cast of Characters on 
occasion (e.g., the part of Zorro is played 



by a Z-100. etc.)? Thanks and keep up the 

good work; I always enjoy your column. 

Christopher Nelson 

Croton-on-Hudson, NY 

UNIX AND S-100 

Dear Jerry, 

It may seem to you that there is a future 
for the computer hobbyist, but I fear I'm 
destined to join the dinosaurs even before 
I get my machine built. Because I'm not 
rich, and actually enjoy configuring a sys- 
tem on a board-by-board basis, that's the 
way I'm buying it. My interests lean toward 
artificial intelligence, and I want a machine 
with some horsepower on which I can run 
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machine Twilight Zone.) Now's the dilem- 
ma: CompuPro, Dual, and others make ter- 
rific 80286- and 68000-based boards; I've 
yet to find a manufacturer or dealer that 
will bundle UNIX with an S-100 processor 
board. I even went so far as to call Micro- 
soft to hear about the fabled XENIX, only 

[continued) 



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CHAOS MANOR MAIL 



to be told that it was sold to hardware 
manufacturers and vendors only and that 
I should contact a dealer with my needs. 
Sigh. 1 haven't found a dealer who will sell 
UNIX with a processor only. 

I can't accept that my interests are so 
strict and narrow as to completely cut me 
out of the mainstream of the micro 
marketplace— there are just too many whole 
systems (68000 or 80286 running UNIX) 
available as business systems for those 
with the money to spend. What I can ac- 
cept is that the market for do-it-yourself 
systems integrators is dwindling; people 
are buying more prepackaged systems 
and doing their own less. It is also far more 
lucrative to sell prepackaged systems and 
unbelievably easier to support the same. 

It would be possible for me to finance 
the purchase of a PC AT and find UNIX 
for it, but I've no way of knowing what 
compromises were designed into it, nor 
would I know if the UNIX was just trans- 
ported 8086 code or an honest rewrite to 
take advantage of the new features in the 
80286. (My feelings on the PC are quite 
strong— the only thing IBM did was take 



a mediocre design and turn it into the stan- 
dard for PCs. It could have done a much 
better job; I'd rather build my own.) 

I could go on ad nauseam, but I'm sure 
you get the drift; we're a dying entity be- 
ing replaced by the handlers of PCs, Lotus 
and such. There is much being published 
on computing, but much on these products, 
rather than the internals of the machines 
themselves. It comes down to a definition 
of hobbyist, 

Mark Pilon 

FOB 105 

Golden, CO 80402 

You have quite a problem; I expect that 
Steve Garcia would be more help than 
I can be. Or maybe one of the readers 
can help.— lerry 

Award Winner 

Dear Jerry, 

This gem accompanied the Pro-Digicalc 
spreadsheet program we recently bought. 
It's one of the more interesting software 
license provisions I've seen. 



"You may not attempt to discern any of 
the software concepts or architecture from 
the software." 

Michael E. Macmillan 

Ye gods: if the goal of Why Systems Inc. 
is to get people to ask "why?" on the 
theory that it will make their name mem- 
orable, they've succeeded. Herewith they 
receive my annual crumpled floppy 
award for the silliest license agreement 
yet. The rest of the agreement is stan- 
dardly stupid; this provision is what wins 
for them. 

Thanks— Jerry 

Computer Stores 

Dear Jerry, 

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376 BYTE* APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 13 



CHAOS MANOR MAIL 



them home from a full-price computer 
store, they deserve to fail. 

Other types of consumer businesses 
long ago developed into effective mer- 
chandisers. The result is that discounters, 
mail-order houses, and full-service re- 
tailers successfully coexist. When we pay 
full price for a stereo at DeLuxe Sound, 
it is because we receive value that Curb- 
stone Discount does not offer, and it was 
worth the price difference, Often that dif- 
ference is simply the knowledge that our 
needs were met by an effective product 
combination in an appropriate price range 
backed by a reputation of quality service, 
and that the transaction was accomplished 
treating us as intelligent human beings 
rather than suckers to be bilked. 

I am a consumer who has too often 
found that Compu-Bilk and their ilk fail to 
provide the services they accuse the dis- 
count stores of not providing. Often the 
discount stores and mail-order houses 
provide a level of service that I earnestly 
wish I could get at my local full-price store! 
As a long-term computer professional, who 
for a variety of reasons shops in camou- 
flage, I can usually tell when computer 
store salespeople are simply trying to ex- 
tort. The average consumer feels this too, 
no doubt, in an undirected uneasiness that 
translates into the behavior your commen- 
tary discusses and store owners deplore. 

When full-price computer stores make 
it clear to consumers what they get for 
their money, and if that something is of 
value to the consumer, the full-price com- 
puter stores will survive. Too many com- 
puter-savvy people think that consumer 
marketing is easy and they can make a kill- 
ing selling them. Evidence of this attitude 
is your own lament in the same article 
about product pricing. Add the observa- 
tion that the inexpensive Borland products 
were available only by mail order, in spite 
of strong marketing, until they became hot 
items and the verdict is guilty. If they fail 
to repent, they will continue to go out of 
business. 

The halt, lame, and starving of the world 
need our sympathy and good works. Let's 
not waste them on the smug and greedy 
who don't! 

Richard L. Swanson 
North Bend, WA 

It depends on the store, of course; I've 
written my share of diatribes against the 
smooth-talking imbeciles who don't know 
a ROM from a cable designation. How- 
ever, when good stores do hire knowl- 
edgeable salespeople and try to provide 
full service, Id like to see them succeed. 



Perhaps you're correct; I may have exag- 
gerated the problem. I hope so.— Jerry 

More on Copy Protection 

Dear Jerry 

People discussing the justifications of 
copy protection often compare software 
to books. Proponents of copy protection 
argue that book owners hardly expect 
unlimited copying privileges or expect 
free replacements for lost or destroyed 
books, so why should software owners ex- 
pect these privileges? What they say has 
an element of truth but misses an impor- 
tant point: books are rugged, and floppy 
disks are fragile If you were to leave a 
book on the dashboard of your car in the 
hot sun for four hours, then take it out, 
drive over it once or twice, then dribble 
a little coffee on it, you could still curl up 
with it that night and have yourself a good 
read. A floppy disk would hardly fare as 
well under such abuse. Furthermore, if a 
word or two of a book were somehow 
smudged or made illegible, the remaining 
information in the book would scarcely be 
compromised, but a garbled byte or a bad 
sector on a disk could render the whole 
disk unreadable or ruin the program. Copy 
protection may or may not be defensible, 
but 1 don't think that the justification can 
be based on a comparison between flop- 
py disks and books. 

Garth Ware 
Encinitas, CA 

Well said. I agree. Thanks.— jerry 

WordStar Tips 

Dear Jerry, 

You have mentioned that WordStar's 
global reformat command is grossly slow. 
There is no explicit global reformat com- 
mand in WordStar (that I know of), so I 
presume you are using ~Q~Q~B to repeat 
the ~B (paragraph reform) command until 
interrupted by an < ESC > (or other key- 
stroke). This is indeed quite slow, but part 
of the reason is that ~Q"Q< key > pauses 
between each execution of <key> to 
allow the user to observe the effects so 
far and decide whether/when to interrupt 
the repetition. If there are many short 
paragraphs, "G~Q~B spends much more 
time pausing than reforming. 

However, a digit keystroke (1-9) follow- 
ing ~Q"Q~B adjusts the duration of the 
pause. A "1" gives no perceptible pause 
and speeds global reformatting quite a bit. 
("OH is also needed to prevent hyphen- 
help from stopping the reformatting for 



hyphenation. I have patched my WordStar 
working copies to default to hyphen-help 
off to avoid this.) Global reformatting is still 
not blindingly fast because of the screen 
rewrites after many ~Bs. But since Word- 
Star can handle a large document in a 
single file, no operator attention is 
needed. So when I need a global refor- 
mat, I just take a break while the computer 
does what it's best at! If you haven't tried 
the speed adjustment on the "G~G~B, you 
may be in for a pleasant surprise. 

Kirk A. Mathews 

Thanks for the tips. WordStar is a pretty 
good editor; at least WordStar 3.3 with 
Orchid's PCturbo 186 board really zings. 
I still use WRITE on 8-bit for most of my 
work, but when I do need to use the 
PCturbo 186 I've actually got sort of fond 
of WordStar. Thanks.— Jerry ■ 



Users Group Corner 

Canadian Sanyo User Group 

c/o Ryte Data 

Box 210 Mountain St. 

Haliburton, Ontario KOM ISO 

Canada 

Mac Street Journal 

NY MacUsers' Group 
FOB 6686 Yorkville Station 
New York, NY 10128 

null-Babel 

Independent Newsletter for CBASIC 

Users 
c/o Ric Allen 
799 Converse Dr. 
Cincinnati, OH 45240 

Central Kentucky 
Computer Society 

Suite 100. Security Trust Bldg. 
Lexington, KY 40507 

TIP.C Users Group (TI Professional) 

4212 San Felipe Rd., #287 
Houston, TX 77027 



PSU International 

Joe and Ann Reid 
POB 3244 
Scottsdale, AZ 852 57 



(Victor 9000) 



Washington Area Rainbow 

User Group (DEC Rainbow) 

6415 Adelphi Rd. 
University Park, MD 20782 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 377 



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Interleaf's 

OPS-2000 and 

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by John Markoff 

AND 

Phillip Robinson 



BYTE WEST COAST 

Lasers, Office Publishing, 
and More 



BYTE West Coast is prepared 

monthly by BYTE's editors and staff 

in San Francisco and Palo Alto. 

Correspondence should be addressed 

to BYTE West Coast, BYTE 

Magazine, 42 5 Battery St, San 

Francisco, CA 94111. 



If you want to be "in," introduce some- 
thing that uses both a microcomputer 
and the Canon laser-printer engine. 
That inexpensive, high-resolution, fast, and 
silent descendant of the copying machine 
is popping up everywhere. Last spring 
Hewlett-Packard introduced its LaserJet 
printer— based on the Canon engine. In 
January Apple unveiled the Macintosh Of- 
fice (see our article "The Macintosh Office" 
in the February BYTE, page 120) and its 
LaserWriter printer— based on the Canon 
engine. In the meantime, several other com- 
panies have announced laser printers for 
the IBM Personal Computer (PC) market 
based on— you guessed it. Plenty of peo- 
ple are betting that the laser printer will take 
a huge bite out of the daisy-wheel market. 
Another, more expensive, way to be "in" 
is to find an application for the Sun Micro- 
systems workstation. As we mentioned in 
the January BYTE West Coast ("Light 
Touches," page 415), that powerful 68010- 
based microcomputer has impressive 
graphics, windows, and speed. 

So what would be the ultimate "in"? Right 
again— combine the Canon laser printer and 
the Sun workstation. Interleaf's Office 
Publishing System (OPS-2000) and Technical 
Publishing System (TPS-2000) do just that. 
Interleaf, based in Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, is . . . Wait a minute. Did someone 
say, "Cambridge isn't West Coast?" Well, we 
anticipated some such opportunistic heck- 
ling, and we have some answers. 

Much of the Interleaf publishing package 
comes from right here in Silicon Valley. 
Ideas and components derive from Xerox 
Corporation— particularly its famous Palo 
Alto Research Center (PARC). Alto and Star 
features, such as icons, windows, and 
object-action processes, are fundamental to 
the Interleaf software. And we weren't the 
only ones to notice; at the Interleaf system 
demonstration in Menlo Park, we heard a 
potential customer muttering, "This looks 
more like Xerox than Xerox." Some of the 
folks at Interleaf came from Kurzweil Com- 



puter Products back east (responsible for 
the famous reading machine), but there's 
even a connection there. Xerox bought 
Kurzweil. Finally, we're fascinated by the 
competition that is shaping up between the 
Star clones: both inexpensive machines like 
the Macintosh and expensive machines like 
these Interleaf systems. 

Interleaf introduced the OPS-2000 system 
in the summer of 1984 and is now showing 
off the new, more powerful TPS-2000 sys- 
tem. The TPS-2000 is built around the same 
hardware as the OPS-2000 but it has im- 
proved software. It features new I/O (in- 
put/output) support: an optional optical 
scanner (to convert images into bit-map 
displays for editing and printing) and a 
phototypesetter interface. Either system lets 
you create text and graphics, combine them 
into documents, and print them on a laser 
printer. 

In general, the idea behind both the In- 
terleaf and Apple systems is that you won't 
have to take office documents outside the 
office to typeset them. The print quality 
from the laser is high enough that you can 
use its output for forms, reports, proposals, 
and manuals. (Besides, the printer can pro- 
duce eight pages a minute.) The Sun 
workstation screen displays 75 dots per 
inch; the laser printer prints 300 dots per 
inch; and a phototypesetter produces 1000 
dots per inch or more. 

Does office publishing sound like a nar- 
row, specialized field? Interleaf believes that 
office publishing is a billion-dollar industry 
that will grow to 8 billion dollars by 1988. 

Hardware 

The Sun workstation with the Sun 2 pro- 
cessor card runs the Interleaf shell (which 
is written in C) under Berkeley 4.2 UNIX. 
The shell has its own windows and doesn't 
let you run other applications concurrent- 
ly However, to run another program all you 
have to do is get back to UNIX. That's easy. 
In fact, even without any help, the system 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 379 



BYTE WEST COAST 



did it several times during the demon- 
stration. 

A three-button optical mouse is 
used to control most of the work on 
the 19-inch diagonal screen. The 900- 
by 1152-pixel screen yields the high 
(75 dots per inch) resolution and a 
high spoilage factor. What's spoilage? 
That's what you feel when you play 



with a superb, expensive machine like 
this and then have to go home to a 
bare-bones Kaypro. 

The basic Sun workstation has 2 
megabytes of RAM (random-access 
read/write memory) and ROM (read- 
only memory) and is accompanied by 
a 42-megabyte hard disk. If the two 
terminals you can attach to the 



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Inquiry 32 for Dealers. 
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42-megabyte system aren't enough, 
buy the 130-megabyte disk; then you 
can attach as many as 1 5 terminals (if 
you can afford them). Each Sun work- 
station costs about $22,000. The 
OPS-2000 system with software one 
workstation, printer driver, printer, 
and lots of support and instruction 
runs about $52,000. The scanner and 
scanned-image editing option costs 
$40,000. The digital-typesetter inter- 
face that sets type and produces 
camera-ready pages (supporting 
Monotype, Compugraphic Autologic, 
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ters) begins at $7500. the laser printer 
at $14,500. 

Although Interleaf specializes in 
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if you already have a Sun workstation. 
If you want to use other computers, 
a simplified version of the OPS-2000 
software is available now for Apollo 
systems— both the bit-slice and the 
68000 versions. According to Interleaf 
software engineer Roch Skelton, ports 
to other systems are in the works. 

The Imagen printer controller ac- 
cepts fonts, bit maps, and ASCII 
(American Standard Code for Infor- 
mation Interchange) characters from 
the Sun workstation and msterizes 
them. That is, it converts them into 
one big bit map for the Canon printer. 
Skelton notes that the rasterization 
software is Imagen's, but "We're help- 
ing them develop and fix their soft- 
ware." Imagen, by the way, is another 
one of the many companies popu- 
lated by refugees from Xerox. 

The Imagen printer-controller box 
has about the same volume as the 
Canon printer but is shorter and 
longer. Inside it is a 68000-based 
computer and 1.2 5 megabytes of 
memory It also interfaces with the 
new Ricoh Corporation laser-printer 
engine. Its specifications are about 
equivalent to the Canon's, but, ac- 
cording to Interleaf, Ricoh has a 
stronger market in Europe. 

By summer 1985 we should see 
laser printers capable of 600- to 
800-dot-per-inch resolution. Interleaf 
is using such a printer with its own sys- 
tems. This resolution approaches that 



BYTE WEST COAST 



at the low end of typesetting. Inter- 
leaf will use a Toshiba printer engine 
with a Dataproducts controller to pro- 
duce up to 24 pages a minute by next 
year. Interleaf hopes to create its own 
printer controller which it calls RIR for 
Rasterizing Image Processor. 

Software 

Both the OPS-2000 and the TPS-2000 
accept text from IBM PCs, Wang word 
processors, WordStar, Scribe, Nroff, 
and Itoff— in fact, just about any ASCII 
file. Interleaf has filter programs to 
massage text that doesn't arrive in 
usable condition. Documents within 
the Interleaf systems are saved as 
standard UNIX files and you can 
transfer them between UNIX systems 
using standard utilities. The attributes 
that dictate the document's format 
are stored in a separate dot file. Except 
for a leading period, the dot file has 
the same name as the ASCII file. The 
OPS-2000 also directly accepts Lotus 
1-2-3 spreadsheet data via a special 
RS-232C connection and a communi- 
cations program that are available 
from Interleaf. 

The fonts occupy 2.5 megabytes of 
disk space and the software occupies 
another 5 megabytes. The basic 
OPS-2000 shell takes up 600K bytes 
of the internal memory; having it in 
RAM speeds up document format- 
ting. Even 2.5 megabytes of font 
storage contains only two fonts; a 
serif style (called Classic) and a sans- 
serif style (Modern). And the font 
sizes only go up to 24 point. Future 
versions will include 36- and 72-point 
sizes, light and condensed fonts, and 
other improvements. 

Interleaf claims to be ready to sup- 
port color when the workstation and 
printer hardware can handle it. "It's an 
evolving product" was a sentence we 
heard repeatedly. Skelton kept refer- 
ring to the many new features in the 
March software release— more fonts, 
new paint capacities, section number- 
ing, document indexing, etc. 

The OPS-2000 discriminates be- 
tween four types of graphics: business 
graphics (charts and graphs that the 
OPS-2000 software produces), 
scanned images (input through the 



special optical scanner that Interleaf 
sells), simple created graphics (boxes, 
lines, circles), and Calcomp 960 plot- 
ter graphics. Eventually, all of these 
will be interchangeable. However, the 
older version of the OPS-2000 has 
limitations for each. For example, 
scanned images can't be rotated and 
Calcomp 960 plots can't be filled 



because the software doesn't 
recognize the edges of the figures as 
continuous. The Adobe PostScript/ 
Apple LaserWriter combination and 
the Interleaf OPS-2000 are clearly dif- 
ferent in that the former can print 
anything you draw on the screen, the 
latter cannot. 

[continued] 



Change your diskette to fit the IBM PC 




THE TILE CONNECTION 

8" DISKETTE SYSTEM FOR THE IBM PC 

Our TILE CONNECTION programs provide 8' diskette file exchange 
between the IBM PC and most Micro-Mini Main Frame computer 
systems. 

Our "WORD CONNECTION programs provide 8 diskette text docu- 
ment exchange between the IBM PC and many word processing 
systems. 

Our DISPLAYWRITER CONNECTION programs transform documents 
from Textpack, Wordstar, Multimate, etc. to the new DisplayWrite 2 
format. 

In addition to our hardware and program products, we also provide 
a conversion service for customer supplied diskettes. Please contact 
us for information about the hundreds of 5 l A and 8" diskette formats 
and systems which we currently support. 

FLAGSTAFF ENGINEERING / P.O. Box 1970 / Flagstaff, AZ 86002 
Telephone 602 774 5 188 / Telex 705609 FLAG-ENG UD 



Inquiry 152 for Dealers. Inquiry 153 for End Users. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 381 



BYTE WEST COAST 



The OPS-2000 includes clip art and 
a wish book. The clip art is a library 
of diagrams, mathematical symbols, 
and graphics that you can use direct- 
ly or modify. The wish book contains 
examples of 50 types of business 
charts that the system can use as a 
model for your own graphics. You can 
add your own chart types to it. 



The OPS-2000 lets you size, dupli- 
cate, move, fill, and rotate images. It 
uses the same cut-and-paste scheme 
that the Macintosh employs. The 
TPS-2000 adds features for type- 
setting such as multiple-column capa- 
bility and scaling. Ttoo of the fonts are 
vector fonts that can be rotated and 
sized along with other diagramming 



OVEMJRPC 
THE GUT OF SIGHT. 




Until now, your PC was telling only 
half the story. Because no matter how 
you look at it, words and numbers are 
simply that: words and numbers. 

But the Datacopy 700 changes all that. 
TUR N YOUR W ORD PROCESSOR 

INTO AN IMAGE PROCESSOR. 

This remarkable peripheral enables 
you to combine photos, diagrams, even 
3-D objects with word processing, data 
base, CAD and communications applica- 
tions using standard software. 

All you need to get 
the picture is an IBM 
XT, AT, or compatible 
Our friendly, yet 
powerful, Word 
Image Processing | 
System™ software 
is included in your 
purchase. 



Once installed, our elec- 
tronic digitizing scanner 
allows you to capture 
images in high resolution. 
These can then be manipu- 
lated, stored, retrieved, 
and even printed. 

But what's truly amaz- 
ing is the range of applica- 
tions for the Datacopy 700. 
Such as generating complex 
documents including text, 
drawings and pictures. 
Technical manuals. Catalogs. Personnel or 
document files. Or what ever you decide. 
The result is a visionary achievement: 
the power to give words and numbers far 
more meaning. To publish information, 
not just data. And to extend the possibili- 
ties of your PC. All for a surprisingly 
low cost. 

For more details, call toll-free 1-800- 
821-2898 or in California 415-965-7900. 
Or write to Datacopy Corporation, 1215 
Terra Bella Avenue, 
Mountain View, 
CA 94043. Telex: 
701994 DATA- 
COPY UD. 




DATACOPY 

The Eye of the Computer 



objects. Scanned images can be posi- 
tioned, cropped, sized, rotated, 
shaded, blended, merged, air- 
brushed, silhouetted, textured, or 
overlaid with text. 

The Interleaf system uses a series of 
fixed and floating rectangular win- 
dows called frames. [Editor's note: These 
frames should not be confused with 
artificial-intelligence frames.] A fixed frame 
is tied to a particular spot in the text 
stream and moves on the page when 
the text is edited. A floating frame is 
tied to a particular location on the 
page called an anchor. This frame 
stays put and the text flows around it. 
The user interface depends on object- 
action processes: you select an 
object— text or graphics— and use the 
pop-up menus to manipulate it. 

We're Not Done Yet 

Will Interleaf's expensive, powerful 
system win the hearts of office pub- 
lishers? You can have many but not all 
of its special features for much less 
money in the Apple Macintosh Office. 
To some extent, you can even 
duplicate the scanner with peripherals 
such as the Thunderware image 
digitizer described in our February 
BYTE West Coast ("What's Next?" 
page 371). Still for now the Interleaf 
systems are more complete and much 
faster than anything based on the 
Mac. What happens when the Macin- 
tosh gets some publishing software 
more powerful than MacWrite? We'll 
wrestle with that question in next 
month's BYTE West Coast when we 
look at Aldus Corporation's electronic 
paste-up and composition program, 
PageMaker. 

FastFinder: A Macintosh 
Programmers Workshop 

The Apple Macintosh software archi- 
tecture is based on the concept of a 
visual shell that insulates you from 
many of the nuts and bolts of a tradi- 
tional operating system. Most people 
are now familiar with the widely 
copied, mouse-driven, bit-mapped 
desktop display that Apple claims of- 
fers "radical ease of use." However, 
much of the criticism of the Macin- 

{continued) 



382 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 110 



ntroducing the Most Powerful 
Business Software Ever! 

TRS-80™ (Model I, II, III, or 16) • APPLE™ • IBM™ • OSBORNP" • CP/M™ • XEROX™ 



GENERAL LEDGER. 




The VersaBusiness" Series 

Each VERSABUSINESS module can be purchased and used independently, 
or can be linked in any combination to form a complete, coordinated business system. 



VERSARECEIVABLES™ $99.95 

Versa RECEIVABLES 1 " is a complete menu-driven accounts receivable, invoicing, and 
monthly statement-generating system. It keeps track of all information related to who 
owes you or your company money, and can provide automatic billing for past due ac- 
counts. VERSA RECEIVABLES™ prints all necessary statements, invoices, and summary 
reports and can be linked with VersaLedGER B* and VERSA INVENTORY™. 

VERSAPAYABLES™ $99.95 

Versa PAYABLES™ is designed to keep track of current and aged payables, keeping you 
in touch with all information regarding how much money your company owes, and to 
whom. VERSA PAYABLES™ maintains a complete record on each vendor, prints checks, 
check registers, vouchers, transaction reports, aged payables reports, vendor reports, 
and more. With VERSA PAYABLES™, you can even let your computer automatically select 
which vouchers are to be paid. 

VERSAPAYROLL™ $99.95 

VERSA PAYROLL™ is a powerful and sophisticated, but easy to use payroll system that 
keeps track of all government-required payroll information. Complete employee records 
are maintained, and all necessary payroll calculations are performed automatically, with 
totals displayed on screen for operator approval. A payroll can be run totally, automati- 
cally, or the operator can intervene to prevent a check from being printed, or to alter 
information on it. If desired, totals may be posted to the VERSA LEDGER IT" system. 

VERSAlNVENTORY™ $99.95 

VERSA INVENTORY™ is a complete inventory control system that gives you instant access 
to data on any item. VERSA INVENTORY™ keeps track of all information related to what 
items are in stock, out of stock, on backorder, etc., stores sales and pricing data, alerts 
you when an item falls below a preset reorder point, and allows you to enter and print 
invoices directly or to link with the VERSA RECEIVABLES™ system. VERSA INVENTORY™ prints 
all needed inventory listings, reports of items below reorder point, inventory value re- 
ports, period and year-to-date sales reports, price lists, inventory checklists, etc. 

•CQMPUTRQNXCSi 

50 N. PASCACK ROAD, SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. 10977 



VERSALEDGER H™ $149.95 

Versa Ledger IV* is a complete accounting system that grows as your business 
grows, Versa Ledger IV M can be used as a simple personal checkbook register, 
expanded to a small business bookkeeping system or developed into a large 
corporate general ledger system without any additional software. 

• Versa LEDGER IP gives you almost unlimited storage capacity 

(300 to 10,000 entries per month, depending on the system), 

• stores all check and general ledger information forever, 

• prints tractor-feed checks, 

• handles multiple checkbooks and general ledgers, 

• prints 17 customized accounting reports including check registers, 
balance sheets, income statements, transaction reports, account 
listings, etc. 

VERSA Ledger IP comes with a professionally-written 160 page manual de- 
signed for first- time users. The VERSA LEDGER 11™ manual will help you become 
quickly familiar with Versa Ledger IP", using complete sample data files 
supplied on diskette and more than 50 pages of sample printouts. 



SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! 



Every VERSABUSINESS™ module is guaranteed to outperform all other competitive systems, 
and at a fraction of their cost. If you are not satisfied with any VERSABUSINESS™ module, you 
may return it within 30 days for a refund. Manuals for any VERSABUSINESS™ module may be 
purchased for $25 each, credited toward a later purchase of that module. 



To Order: 



Write or call Toll-free (800) 43 1-28 18 

(N.Y.S. residents call 9 14-425- 1535) 



^ 



* add $5 to CANADA or MEXICO 
add proper postage elsewhere 



* add $3 for shipping in UPS areas 

* add $4 for CO.D. or non-UPS areas 

Inquiry 177 

DEALER INQUIRIES WELCOME 

All prices and specifications subject to change / Delivery subject to availability. 



' TRS-80 is a trademark of the Radio Shack Division of Tandy Corp. • * APPLE is a trademark of Apple Corp. - *!BM is a trademark of IBM Corp. - * OSBORNE is a trademark of Osborne Corp. 

*CP/M is a trademark of Digital Research ■ *XEROX is a trademark of Xerox Corp. 



BYTE WEST COAST 



tosh design has focused on this visual 
interface. While it protects you from 
operating-system complexities, it also 
strips away some powerful features, 
such as batch operations and macros. 

All of this might be forgiven if the 
visual shell were faster than it is; 
however, to date, lack of speed ap- 
pears to be the Macintosh Achilles' 
heel. If the Macintosh has a design 
flaw, it is that the goal of user/com- 
puter interactivity is often thwarted by 
performance bottlenecks that force 
long waits for certain operations. 

The Finder, a system program that 
controls the Macintosh desktop, 
mediates user interaction with the 
system and displays a visual, icon- 
based version of files and folders. The 
Finder launches a program when you 
point at it and double-click the mouse 
button. Its lack of speed comes, in 
part, from not being coresident; each 
time you exit an application, the 
Finder must be reloaded. It also 
spends a lot of time recalculating the 
location of documents on the desk- 
top each time it displays. These com- 
bine to make the process of switch- 
ing between applications cumber- 
some on the Macintosh. 

Although Apple hasn't chosen to 
improve the Finder yet, there is now 



an alternative. Michael Lehman has 
developed FastFinder, another desk- 
top for the Macintosh, which is text- 
oriented rather than graphics- or icon- 
oriented. Lehman is a software devel- 
oper and the author of Pascal/MT+. 
His company, MT Microsystems, was 
purchased a number of years ago by 
Digital Research. Lehman worked 
there for three years until leaving last 
year to once again form his own com- 
pany T&rdis Software. 

Lehman wrote FastFinder out of 
frustration with the Finder while 
developing an application for the 
Macintosh. 

Written in Mac C from Consulair 
Corporation, FastFinder includes 
some Mac C run-time libraries that 
Lehman has specially tweaked. It offers 
a standard Macintosh display with a 
series of windows and a menu bar 
across the top of the screen. Within 
each window you have access to a 
line-oriented command processor 
that you can access either by typing 
at the keyboard or by selecting op- 
tions from the pull-down menus. 

Although Lehman refers to Fast- 
Finder as an "expert's alternative" and 
includes with it a number of features 
oriented toward Macintosh program- 
mers who want to automatically link 



Companies Mentioned 


Canon U.S.A. Inc. 

One Canon Plaza 
Lake Success, NY 11042 
(516) 488-6700 


Ricoh Corp. 

5 Dedrick Place 

West Caldwell NJ 07006 

(201) 575-9550 


Imagen Inc. 

2660 Marine Way 
Mountain View. CA 94043 
(415) 960-0714 


Sun Microsystems Inc. 
2475 Garcia Ave. 
Mountain View, CA 94043 
(415) 960-1300 


Interleaf Inc. 

1100 Massachusetts Ave. 
Cambridge, MA 02138 
(617) 497-5570 


Tardis Software 

2817 Sloat Rd. 

Pebble Beach, CA 93953 

(408) 372-1722 


Kurzweil Computer Products Inc. 

185 Albany St. 
Cambridge, MA 02139 
(617) 864-4700 


Xerox Corp. 

POB 1600 

Stamford, CT 06904 
(203) 329-8700 



operations in the process of program 
development, it also should appeal to 
anyone who wants a faster Macintosh. 
Lehman claims that FastFinder runs 
"up to five times faster" than Apple's 
Finder and that it adds a number of 
features such as fast disk ejection. 
FastFinder's greater speed is evident 
in its ability to both load programs 
slightly faster and reload several times 
faster after exiting a program. Addi- 
tionally, Lehman will soon release a 
desk accessory called FastLauncher to 
be installed with FastFinder. Fast- 
Launcher lets you select a new pro- 
gram while still operating in another 
one and then lets you go directly to 
the new program without returning to 
the desktop. 

To use FastFinder you must do 
without the Macintosh graphical inter- 
face. (Lehman says he has a graphical 
version in mind.) FastFinder direc- 
tories appear as text-only in a list of 
those files that you can scroll in their 
individual windows. You can install 
programs as special menu items and 
then launch them by dragging the 
mouse down and clicking on menus; 
however, you must also give up the 
Macintosh document and folder 
metaphor for organizing files. 

If you are doing program develop- 
ment on the Macintosh, FastFinder 
has a series of UNIX-like utilities that 
you can access from the menu or 
command line. Many of these com- 
mands are already available as small 
utility programs for the Macintosh; 
however, FastFinder makes them 
easier to use because you don't have 
to leave the desktop to use them. 
Others, such as combine, compare, 
and list, are not currently available. 

FastFinder includes a scripting capa- 
bility that you can call with the do 
command. The do command ex- 
ecutes a series of FastFinder com- 
mands that can be created with a text 
editor or a special record command 
and then stored in a text file. 
FastFinder can also link applications 
under script control. 

Now that he has finished FastFinder, 
Lehman is writing a Macintosh ap- 
plication generator for novice and ex- 
pert programmers. ■ 



384 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



DISK DRIVES 



«SK 




Shugart 

• SA455 

1/2 HT. PC Compatible 



$99 



Teac 55B 

• Slimline 360K 
• PC Compatible 

$119 



Tandon TM100-2 

• Full HT, 360K 

• PC Compatible 



$139 



MPI 



B-52, 360K • Full Height 
• IBM Compatible 



$100 



Apple Compatible Drives 

QUANTITY 

1 2 10 



ecu Apple Drives 

• Slimline 
• Fully Apple Compatible 



$140 



5 1 /4" Disk Drives 

OUANTITY 

1 2 10 



Micro sci 






Teac 








A-20fA-20FuilHT $175 


$169 


$159 


FD55A.160K 


$110 


$110 


$110 


Controller 65 


60 


50 


FD55B, 360K 


119 


115 


109 


Rana Systems 

Elite I S210 


$205 


5200 


FD55F, Quad Density 159 
All Teac s are Half Heights 


150 


140 


Elite ii. Dbi. Head 335 


330 


325 










Elite ill, Quad Density 395 


445 


435 


Tandon 








Controller Controls 4 Drives 75 


m 


70 


TM100-1.160K 


S150 


$140 


$130 


CCU Half Height 






TM100-2, 360K 


139 


135 


129 


FD525A Slimline w/cable $140 
FD525Cforllc 169 


$135 
169 


5130 
169 


TM101-4, Quad Density 

TM65-2, 360K !- 2 Height 


280 
195 


2/0 
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2b0 
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CCU Full Height 






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FD555Aw/cable $160 


5150 


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Hard Disk 






B-52. 360K PC compatible 


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$ 95 


$ 90 


lOMegw/controller Call 


Gill 


call 











see us At 

Coast Computer Fair 

March 30 — April 2 

Moscone Center 

San Francisco 



Shugart 

SA400, 160K 

SA455, 360K VS Height 

SA465, Quad Den. V& Height 



$190 $180 $170 

99 95 90 

200 190 180 



Mitsubishi 

4851, V 2 Height $159 $149 $139 

4853, Ouad Den. Vi Height 169 159 140 

Control Data Corp. 

CDC 9409. 360K $190 $180 $170 



8" Siemens 

• FDD100-8 
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$129 



8" Disk Drives 



QUANTITY 

1 2 10 



Siemens 



FDD-100-8 
FDD-200-8 



801R.Sgl./Dbl. 
851R,Dbl./Dbl. 



$129 $120 $111 
180 170 160 



Shugart 



$160 $150 $140 
480 470 460 



Tandon 

TM848-1E,$gl./Dbl.v ? Ht. 
TM848-2E,Dbl./Dbl. V*Ht 

Mitsubishi 

M2894-63.Dbl./Dbl. 
M2896-63.Dbl./Dbl.V 2 Ht. 



$270 $265 $260 
370 360 350 



$400 $390 $380 
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SW & 8" 
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Single Cabinet w/pwr $ 70 $ 60 S 50 

DualThinlineCabw/pwr 80 70 60 

Dual Cabinet& Power 80 70 60 

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JMR 8" 

Sgl. Cabinet w/pwr & fan $220 $210 $200 

Dual w/pwr for 2 thinlines 230 220 210 

Dual w/pwr& fan 270 260 250 



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(800) 847-1718 



Unlimited 

A California Corporation 



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inglewood, CA 90304 

16129 Hawthorne Blvd , Suite t 
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MAIL ORDER: 

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Customer Service & Technical 

(213)618-0487 

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(800)847-1718 

Outside California 

(213)618-0477 

inside California 



PRINTERS 



Okidata 92 




• 160 CPS 
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Letter Quality 795 

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Delta 10 379 

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PRINTER INTERFACES 

Fourth Dimension 

Card & Cable $ 49 

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Tractor for 82 & 92 $ 59 

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J Amdek 

300G, Hi-Res Green 
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300 Hi-Res Color comp. 

500 RGB Composite 
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HX1 2, RGB Color 

SR-1 2 w / Dou bier Board 


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Monochrome Green $ 219 

color Hi-Res 559 

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440 Ultra Hi-Res 999 




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Hayes Modem 

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300Baud 195 

1200B internal 359 

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Mark VI 300 Baud IBM 79 

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Mark 10, 300 Baud Stand alone 149 



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IBM PC System 

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IBM PC System 

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IBM 

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PC256K,2Drives . 1599 

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Colorcard $ 185 

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Hard Disk 

10 Meg. External w/ powersupply $1195 

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Colorcard 239 

Paradise Systems 

Multi-displavCard $ 329 

NewModularCard 299 

ModuleA 88 

ModuleB 240 



Ouadram 

QuadColorCard $ 199 

Ouadlink 389 

64K upgrade 

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Upgrade 200 ns $ 169 

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PC Peacock $ 215 

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Parallel $ 79 

Serial 79 

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RF Modulator 
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Kraft 

Joystick S 44 

Macro 

Joystick $ 29 

Micro Max 

Viewmax80.80col.card $ 139 

Viewmax80E(FforllE)64K 129 



Micro Soft 

Mouse $ 139 

Premium soft card HE 369 

Multiplan 189 

Soft Card (280) W/64K . 279 

Micro Tek 

Serial interface S 89 

TC 

Joystick $ 39 

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Paddles 34 

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Sgl/Dbl reinforced hub. $16 I00forl40 

Dbl/DDl reinforced hub 19 I00forl70 

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verbatim 

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8 DISKETTES 

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verbatim 

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Inquiry 72 



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The KT-7/PC supports Time 
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Inquiry 218 



Enhancer Card, 80286 AT Card, 
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••*• ••'• .•••. 
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BYTE U.K. 


• •••V • 9 • • • •• 

••••••• VI" 




• • •* • • • 


New Database Ideas 



Frame theory 

used in a 

database 

generator 



by Dick Pountain 



Dick Pountain is a technical author 

and software consultant living in 

London. England. He can be 

contacted do BYTE, POB 372, 

Hancock, NH 03449. 



All the research done so far in arti- 
ficial intelligence (AI) points to the 
conclusion that if computers are to 
even begin to approach the capabilities of 
the human brain, they must store and 
retrieve huge amounts of context data. In 
humans this data appears to be a combina- 
tion of innate and learned knowledge. 

No one seriously suggests any longer that 
an intelligent computer can be realized 
purely algorithmically. Rather, the process 
will be a long and painstaking one that in- 
volves stuffing more and more facts into a 
machine. Some of these will be facts about 
the world we live in, while others will be 
rules about those facts. In short, the em- 
phasis will be at least as much on smart 
data storage and retrieval as it is on com- 
putation and calculation. 

These ruminations are prompted by a re- 
cent encounter with I.D.E.A.S. (Inference 
Driven Evolutionary Applications Software) 
from AI Software Ltd., a commercial data- 
base-generator package that uses a novel 
approach influenced by Marvin Minsky's 
theory of frames. It runs on mainframes, 
minicomputers, and microcomputers such 
as the Sage IV and the TDI Pinnacle. You 
can use it to create accounting, payroll, 
costing, stock control and other commer- 
cial applications that use a shared database. 

Frames 

In the article "Database Types" by Rich Kra- 
jewski (October 1984 BYTE, page 137) there 
is a summary of six main categories of exist- 
ing database software. Here's a recap of the 
three main types: A simple file-management 
system enables you to build files out of 
records. Records are self-contained parcels 
of data structured into fields that are the 
same for every record. In an address-book 
application each record would contain a 
complete name and address, with fields 
called Name Street, City, and Phone 
Number, for example. However, information 
held in different files is totally separated and 
can't be related. 



At a higher level of sophistication are the 
relational and hierarchical types. In a relational 
database you can relate records from dif- 
ferent files assuming that they have at least 
one field in common. If you have one file 
of customer names and addresses and 
another file with their names and credit 
balances, you can combine the information 
using Name as the common field and ex- 
tract records containing name address, and 
credit balance for a particular person. In 
other words, the links between different sets 
of data are made via the contents of the 
files, and you can define new relations while 
you're using the database by using the com- 
mand JOIN. 

In a hierarchical database, you can 
predefine a tree-like structure of relation- 
ships between different files that doesn't de- 
pend at all on the record contents. For in- 
stance, a file called Customers could own 
subfiles called Address and Credit Balance. 
A more complex form of this database 
allows any file to own any other, so the 
result looks more like a network than a sim- 
ple tree. 

The I.D.E.A.S. program doesn't fit comfort- 
ably into any of these categories. Data is 
related neither by the contents of data fields 
nor by a predefined file structure, but by a 
system of coordinates abstracted from the 
structure of the real world. 

I.D.E.A.S. was conceived about five years 
ago by a group of commercial programmers 
who happened upon Minsky's 1974 paper 
"A Framework for Representing 
Knowledge,'' dealing with the AI problem 
of computer vision. Impressed by the 
methods expounded there, the group de- 
cided to try to set up such a framework for 
the world of commerce and manufacturing. 

In a nutshell, Minsky's frame is a data struc- 
ture for representing a state of affairs or an 
activity The frame has slots that are filled 
with specific instances, while the frame itself 
represents the archetypal state For exam- 
ple a frame describing a house might have 

[continued) 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 389 



BYTE U.K. 



Table I: The prime dimensions used by I.D.E.A.S. to distinguish one piece of 
data from another. 

1) Time. A date or time of day. 

2) Financial. A relationship to the accounting system. 

3) External trading. A relationship with someone or something outside the 
enterprise. 

4) Batch identity. An identifier for a particular batch of products. 

5) Commodity. An identifier of a particular product type. 

6) Internal organization. An identifier of a particular department or other subgroup 
inside the enterprise 

7) Personnel. The people involved. 



slots called Living Room. Bathroom, 
Kitchen, Garage, etc. The contents of 
these slots might also be frames; the 
Kitchen frame could have slots Stove, 
Sink. Waste Disposal, and Freezer, lb 
describe a particular house you fill in 
these slots with specific makes of ap- 
pliances and furniture Equally impor- 
tant, slots can have default values, so 
partial descriptions can be allowed 
and reasonable guesses made in the 



absence of complete information. 
Groups of frames can share slots, thus 
relating different classes of objects (as 
in the relational database); as an ex- 
ample, an Office frame might share 
the slots T^ble and Chair with the 
House frame. 

Prime Dimensions 

The authors of I.D.E.A.S. studied their 
previous accounting, stock control. 



payroll, and other programs to see if 
they could create a frame that would 
describe all the various kinds of data 
used. Through trial and error they 
identified a set of seven dimensions that 
they claim effectively define any piece 
of data used in a commercial/manu- 
facturing enterprise. Define in this 
sense means that a set (between one 
and seven) of these types (or dimen- 
sions) is sufficient to distinguish one 
piece of data from another. The prime 
dimensions are shown in table 1. 

lb see how this works let's look at 
some examples. You can uniquely 
define a product's list price using only 
the commodity dimension (the prod- 
uct code). However, if you have dif- 
ferent price lists for different kinds of 
customers, you need to specify both 
the external and the commodity di- 
mensions (customer name or code 
and product number). If prices change 

[continued) 



Greywolf marketing 



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390 BYTE- APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 174 



SuperSoft Languages 

When Performance Counts 



A programmer's most 
important software tool is 
the language compiler or 
interpreter he uses. He has 
to depend on it to work 
and work well. 

At SuperSoft, we believe it. 
That's why we offer three 
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SuperSoft FORTRAN, 
SuperSoft C, and SuperSoft 
BASIC. They answer the 
programmer's need for 
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microcomputers. 



SuperSoft 
FORTRAN 

With large code and data. 

SuperSoft FORTRAN version 2.0 
with large code and data space 
is now available under MS DOS 
and PC DOS. It gives you the 
power to compile extremely large 
FORTRAN programs on micros. 
It allows double precision and 
complex numbers, full IEEE float- 
ing point, and a full range of other 
important features for the serious 
FORTRAN programmer. Both 
8087 support and a RATFOR pre 
processor are optionally available. 
FORTRAN (CP/M-80 & 86, MS 

DOS, PC DOS): $325 
8087 support $50 RATFOR: $100 



SuperSoft A 

A true Ada* subset 

SuperSoft A is a completely standard 
subset of the Ada language, incor- 
porating approximately 63% of the 
standard Ada syntax and including 
such important features as packages 
and separate compilation . For CP/ 
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SuperSoft C 

SuperSoft C is a high-powered, full- 
featured C compiler designed for 
serious C applications. It is fast - 
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and it is packed with more than 1 35 
library functions (all delivered in 
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SuperSoft C (for CP/M-80, CP/M-86, 
MS DOS, PC DOS): $350 





SuperSoft 
BASIC 

The SuperSoft BASIC compiler lets 
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financial programs. It uses BCD 
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SuperSoft BASIC is a true native 
code compiler that is generally 
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SuperSoft BASIC Compiler (for 
MS DOS, PC DOS, and CP/M-86): 
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Also available for programmers: 

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programmer's text editor: $225.00 
Disk-Edit, an invaluable 

programmer s disk data editor: 

$100.00 



To order call: 800-762-6629 

In Illinois call 217-359-21 12 



In conjunction with SuperSoft, Supersoft FORTRAN was developed by Small Systems Services, 
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Japanese Distributor: ASR Corporation International, TBL Building, 7th Floor, 1-19-9 Toranomon, 
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*Ada is a trademark of the Department of Defense 
PC DOS is a trademark of International Business Machines. 
MS DOS is a trademark of Microsoft 
CP/M-80 and CP/M-86 are trademarks of Digital Research, Inc. 



SuperS ft 

SuperSoft, Inc., 1713 S. Neil St, 
RO. Box 1628, Champaign, IL 61820 



Inquiry 374 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 391 



BYTE U.K. 



frequently, you might want to date 
price lists, adding the time dimension, 
too. 

'Me another example. The value of 
an item dispatched could involve the 
external (who is the customer?), finan- 
cial (how is it accounted for?), com- 
modity (what product?), batch id 
(what order number?), and time (what 



is the date of dispatch?) dimensions. 
In a large company the department 
(internal) could be relevant, too. 

Prime elements are those data ele- 
ments for which only one dimension 
is relevant (e.g., a customer code, a 
product code). They behave more or 
less like keys in a conventional 
database, but they are special 




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because you can organize them into 
hierarchical sets. For example, 
Customer codes can be made a sub- 
set of County codes, which are them- 
selves a subset of Region codes. So 
Fred Bloggs can be situated in York- 
shire which is situated in Northern 
England, More than one superset can 
also exist; Customer code can come 
under Industry code as well, allowing 
Fred Bloggs to belong in Heavy 
Chemicals. 

When you create a new data ele- 
ment (e.g., Value of Item) in the 
I.D.E.A.S. data dictionary, you must fill 
in a primitive frame that identifies 
which prime dimensions are relevant 
for this element. In addition you must 
specify whether the dimension is 
fixed— constant data that goes into 
the dictionary— or floating— data pro- 
vided at run time. For instance, the 
name of the department that makes 
widgets is fixed (unless there's a major 
company reorganization), but the 
customer's name is floating (you want 
to search for customers at run time). 

Once you define such a frame, then 
I.D.E.A.S. knows where to store that 
type of item. In other words, you can 
represent every different kind of data 
object by a point in seven-dimen- 
sional space, or if you prefer, you can 
map individual records into eight- 
dimensional space— the eighth being 
an implicit record number. In physical 
terms, I.D.E.A.S. uses a multitude of 
single-key indexed-sequential files to 
represent this multidimensional 
space, but these files are completely 
hidden; indeed, the concept of a file- 
name doesn't exist in I.D.E.A.S. The 
advantage of this sort of organization 
is that relationships between data 
items follow automatically; only data 
items that share at least one prime 
dimension can be related at all and 
the relationship is forged as soon as 
the items are defined. 

When the database is in use, the 
slots in the frames are filled with real 
instances of customer names, product 
numbers, etc.. just as the fields of a 
record would be in a more conven- 
tional database. 

This approach seems to me to have 

[continued} 



392 BYTE ' APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 36 



Inquiry 389—*- 



RANSTECTOR Has A Better Way 
b Eliminate Computer Malfunctions. 



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tremendous virtues. The structure of 
the database is formed by factors 
relating to the real-world domain be- 
ing dealt with, not by machine- or 
program-related constraints of the 
computer. Though I.D.E.A.S. was de- 
signed to reflect only the world of 
commerce and manufacturing, a dif- 
ferent set of prime dimensions could 



easily adapt the concept to another 
domain. In fact, if you study the 
I.D.E.A.S. prime dimensions carefully 
you'll find that, renamed to be more 
general in scope, they apply rather 
well to other activities already Could 
a computer scientist prove theorems 
about the number of dimensions 
needed for a given domain, or is that 

















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394 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 46 



to usurp the role of philosophy? How 
about a database manager called 
K.A.N.T.? 

Procedure Frames 

If you want to actually do something 
with the data stored in I.D.E.A.S., you 
must define some elements called pro- 
cedural frames. They are equivalent to 
programs written in a command lan- 
guage but are produced by an integral 
program generator after an interactive 
question-and-answer session. 

Tb produce, for example, an invoic- 
ing or stock-control system, you need 
a collection of data elements and a 
collection of procedural frames to 
work on those elements. Typical pro- 
cedures might be Add Customer 
Orders or Update Stock Levels. The 
primitive operations available for use 
in procedural frames are all prefixed 
by a $ sign and called Scommands. 
They include commands for format- 
ting input and output screens, repeti- 
tion and branching, conditionals and 
subroutine calls—in fact all the ele- 
ments you'd expect to find in a data- 
base command language. 

The most important Scommands 
are SLOCATE and $SCAN. These are 
the high-level instructions that actually 
traverse the complex network of data- 
base relationships and retrieve items 
for you. Let's say that we have defined 
a data element called Customer Order 
that requires a customer code (exter- 
nal), an order number (batch id), and 
a product code (commodity). If you 
give SLOCATE those three con- 
straints, it will find a unique order. If 
you give it only a product code, it will 
find the first order by any customer 
that includes this product, and 
$SCAN will then retrieve all orders by 
all customers that include that prod- 
uct. SLOCATE and SSCAN issued 
without any constraints at all simply 
retrieve all customer orders. 

SLOCATE really emphasizes the 
power of the prime-dimensions con- 
cept. Since every piece of data knows 
how it relates to the others, you can 
do a lot with very little; if, for exam- 
ple, you use SLOCATE to find a date, 
you can pull out everything that hap- 

{continued) 
Inquiry 355—* 



I 






*/ was very impressed 

with its overall performance 

and features . . . excellent interactive 

and data quality assurance capabilities 

. . . relatively easy to master. . ." 



BillJacobson 

From a feature article in 

BYTE, October 1984 




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BYTE U.K. 



pened on that day. An Order system 
with parts explosion is merely a matter 
of a couple of SLOCATE and $SCAN 
commands in a loop. 

The SNEWLVL and $OLDLVL com- 
mands allow you to move up and 
down between children and parents 
in a hierarchical set. $CALL allows 
one procedure to call another, and 
control returns automatically when 
the called procedure finishes. Calls 
can be nested in up to nine levels. 
And calculation is possible in a pro- 
cedure although it's currently re- 
stricted to four-function arithmetic on 
11 -digit floating-point numbers. 

Since I.D.E.A.S. is an interactive sys- 
tem, you can create new procedures 
at any time, or modify existing ones, 
without necessarily altering any data 
element definitions at all. This makes 
testing and maintenance a fairly 
straightforward proposition. Built-in 
utilities provide cross-referencing of 
both procedure calls and data- 
element references by procedures. 

The LD.E.A.S. System 

I tested I.D.E.A.S. running on a TDI 
Pinnacle microcomputer with a Wyse 
WY-50 terminal. This new machine is 
similar in many ways to the Sage IV— 
it's a singlebox 68000-based machine 
with 512K bytes of memory, one 
800K-byte floppy-disk drive, and a 
21-megabyte Winchester. It runs its 
68000 at 12 MHz with no wait states 
and is normally supplied with a multi- 
user version of the UCSD p-System 
and on-board support for up to seven 



terminals. It's like having a mainframe 
on your desk, which is just as well 
since I.D.E.A.S. was born on a main- 
frame and needs plenty of memory 
and disk space The version I tested 
runs under the alternative multiuser 
BOS (basic operating system) and is 
written in RM COBOL. You can port 
it to any operating system that com- 
piles RM COBOL, which includes MS- 
DOS and CP/M. 

The system consists of three 
modules, the data dictionary, solution 
generator, and run-time interpreter, all 
of which are menu-driven. These 
modules are entered from a main 
menu so you never need to exit to the 
operating system. 

In the dictionary you create new 
data elements or inspect existing 
ones. When you enter a new name, 
the system presents you with a blank 
frame, dimension by dimension, to fill 
in with float, fix, or irrelevant. And you 
can list all the elements that use a par- 
ticular combination of prime dimen- 
sions with a menu selection called 
frame analysis. When searching for 
existing data elements in the dic- 
tionary, you can type part of a name 
and the system will show you all the 
entries containing that part. 

Data names can consist of up to 20 
characters (including spaces), which 
allows you to use readable English. 
You may also have several names for 
one object (aliases) so different 
departments can employ their own 
uses; for example, the machine shop 
and the accounting department might 



have different terms for talking about 
batches. The system keeps track of 
such aliases and prevents them from 
clashing with the names or aliases of 
other data items. 

You can define a data item as 
numeric, text, or date type, and you 
can give it a class. The classes are 
Journal, Ledger, Property, and Trans- 
action, and they determine what you 
can do to such an item. For instance 
if you declare an item as Journal class 
then you can never delete or alter it, 
but you can annul it by a later entry, 
thus preserving a coherent audit trail. 
You can add to or subtract from 
Ledger entries but you cannot over- 
write them. Properties are ordinary 
data items with no use restrictions. 

In the generator you create pro- 
cedural frames by first naming them 
and then roughing them ,out in the 
form of comments using an integral 
editor. When given the generate com- 
mand, the generator goes through 
this script, line by line, asking for the 
details of the Scommands and their 
parameters, labels, jump destinations, 
and so on. When this is done, it 
generates the code. 

The run-time module is the inter- 
preter from which you use an 
I.D.E.A.S. application. You run pro- 
cedures by typing in their names. 

I'd like to report that the implemen- 
tation is as advanced as the principle 
upon which it's based, but it's not. The 
program betrays its mainframe origins 
in a user interface that is decidedly 
unfriendly by the standards of 



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modern microcomputer software. 

In addition to trivial but irritating 
details like its refusal to accept menu 
selections in lowercase I.D.E.A.S. is 
designed around a Tfeletypewriter- 
style terminal, with a crude line editor 
for procedural frame construction and 
no support for modern terminal facil- 
ities like cursor addressing or screen 
highlighting. Much of this is probably 
due to COBOLs limitations. 

The difficulties I had using the pro- 
gram had more to do with this spartan 
user interface than with the system's 
underlying concepts. On-line help is 
minimal and the menus tend to be 
phrased in I.D.E.A.S. jargon, which is 
less than clear to a first-time user. And 
the documentation had few examples, 
although it is being revised. 

There are also some gaps in the 
specification at the moment, most 
notably in the area of sorting. There 
is no provision for lexical or numeric 
sorting in the procedure generation 
module. This is not as big a problem 
as it might appear because I.D.E.A.S. 
holds and retrieves data already 
sorted on the prime dimensions. 
However, it would be better if you 
could override this with an explicitly 
requested order in some cases. 

I should point out that AI Software 
doesn't consider I.D.E.A.S. static and 
is working on a variety of extensions, 
including a query language (indepen- 
dent of the procedures) and a 
graphics module A rewrite (in C) for 
UNIX systems is also planned; this 
should provide an opportunity to 
polish the user interface a little. It is 
important to note that I.D.E.A.S. is be- 
ing sold as a tool for systems houses 
to produce applications for sale on a 
license basis. It was never intended as 
an end-user system. 

Conclusions 

The concept underlying I.D.E.A.S. 
seems to me to be a fruitful one. The 
notion of using dimensions abstracted 
from the problem domain to structure 
a database rather than relationships 
suggested by the form of data repre- 
sentation (often chosen more by the 
computer than the user), seems very 
much in line with the new directions 



being explored in declarative pro- 
gramming languages. 

It would be very interesting to see 
how well the I.D.E.A.S. concept would 
translate into Prolog; I suspect that it 
would go rather simply since equiva- 
lents of $LOCATE and $SCAN are 
built-in functions of Prolog. I doubt, 
however, that Prolog is sufficiently 



known or accepted yet in commercial 
programming circles for such an ex- 
periment to be attractive. ■ 
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BYTE JAPAN 

The Fifth Generation 
in }apan 



■MMMMH 



ICOT 



The Hitachi S-810 
supercomputer 



Software 
development 



by William M. Raike 



William M Raike, who holds a 

Ph.D. in applied mathematics from 

Northwestern University, has taught 

operations research and computer 

science in Austin, Texas, and 

Monterey. California. He holds a 

patent on a voice scrambler and was 

formerly an officer of Cryptext 

Corporation in the United States. \n 

1 980. he went to japan looking for 

64K~bit RAMs. He has been there 

ever since as a technical translator 

and a software developer. 



The International Conference on 
Fifth Generation Computer Systems 
was held in Tokyo in early 
November 1984, Over 900 participants, 
representing 32 countries, each paid about 
$400 for the privilege of attending. Re- 
searchers from all over the world presented 
62 research papers, and there were a cou- 
ple of interesting panel discussions in ad- 
dition to a highly informative nontechnical 
lecture by Ezra Vogel ("The Changing 
Nature of Information Societies"). 

The objectives of the conference were 
twofold: to provide an international forum 
for the exchange of information, ideas, and 
research in areas related to "new-generation 
computing," and to present to the world a 
summary of the achievements of the 
Japanese government-sponsored Institute 
for New Generation Computer Technology 
(ICOT) at the end of the first of its three 
phases. The second phase of the 10-year 
project will last four years and the third 
phase, three years. 

To gain perspective on what the Japanese 
have thus far accomplished in their fifth- 
generation efforts, you first have to look at 
the objectives for the project. Note that the 
buzzwords "fifth-generation computing" 
and "new-generation computing" are recent 
additions to computer jargon; they're catch- 
all terms that include such topics as parallel 
computer-hardware architectures, artificial 
intelligence, so-called "expert systems," and 
"logic programming —a term used to refer 
to programming languages such as Prolog. 

Started by the Ministry of International 
Tfrade and Industry three years ago, ICOT 
is headed by soft-spoken but intense Dr. 
Kazuhiro Fuchi. He provides something of 
a bridge between ICOT's highly technically 
oriented people, who live in abstract worlds 
of "parallel data-flow architectures" and 
"OR-parallel functions of the KL1 kernel 
language," and the bureaucrats in the 
Ministry who fund ICOT's research. 

Members of the Ministry support such 
general objectives as giving computers a 



more direct role in "improving management 
decision making" as opposed to "mere data 
processing," providing more "user-friendly 
interfaces" (including natural-language pro- 
cessing), and "automating software devel- 
opment," etc. They stress the importance of 
office automation (word processing, filing, 
etc.), in which Japan lags behind the U.S. by 
several years (despite its first-class, inexpen- 
sive hardware), and would like to see ap- 
plications of computers in the medical field, 
which are nearly unheard of here in Japan. 
These worthy objectives are not tied ex- 
clusively to the Fifth Generation Project, but 
it is important to note that they have been 
pursued actively outside Japan for years 
(and not just by computer scientists). Oper- 
ations-research specialists and "quantita- 
tive-management" people were emphasiz- 
ing these themes as far back as the 1960s. 
The Japanese computer industry seems re- 
markably oblivious to the progress that's 
been made in such areas, principally in soft- 
ware, over the last 1 5 years; I'll say more 
about this observation later. 

Dr. Fuchi's views on the priorities of ICOT 
are more illustrative of what is actually go- 
ing on at the Institute. He insists that the 
Fifth, Generation Project is not intended to 
produce commercial benefits— a claim that 
is met with skepticism by just about every- 
one. In his opinion, ICOT's focus is on basic 
technological research and development 
over the long range— 10 to 20 years. He 
doesn't deny that individual companies 
might spin off segments of the technology 
before then, but he disavows that as a goal. 
He says that ICOT has "no intention of get- 
ting involved in the artificial-intelligence 
business',' although ICOT's close relationship 
to AI and expert systems is clearly the basis 
for the choice of a language like Prolog, a 
so-called "logic programming" language, as 
the point of departure for the "kernel lan- 
guage" of the Fifth Generation Project. 

The kernel language, which is not sup- 
posed to be viewed as a user language, pro- 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 401 



BYTE JAPAN 



vides both the theoretical and prac- 
tical interface between the fifth- 
generation hardware and software 
For the first of ICOT's three phases, 
the kernel language (called KLO) is im- 
plemented as a macro language 
called ESP (extended self-contained 
Prolog). On one hand, it provides a 
specific machine language used to 
define the capabilities of specific fifth- 
generation hardware. On the other 
hand, ESP, best described as a macro 
assembly language for KLO, has been 
used to write the operating system for 
the "sequential inference machines" 
(dubbed PSI machines, for "personal 
sequential inference machines") that 
the ICOT researchers will use as basic 
building blocks to experiment with 
parallel machine architectures during 
the second phase of the project. The 
operating system, called SIMPOS (se- 
quential inference machine program- 
ming and operating system), is still in- 



complete, although enough exists to 
provide a practical demonstration and 
research tool. 

Interestingly enough, although the 
PSI machines (six of them exist now, 
and another dozen or so are sched- 
uled to be completed) are also in- 
tended to be used as primary soft- 
ware-development tools for the 
parallel inference machine (which will 
be the focus of ICOT's second phase), 
software development to date has 
been done on a DEC 2060 and as- 
sorted VAX-1I machines. 

Dr. Fuchi is concerned about wide- 
spread misunderstanding of the role 
of Prolog (versus LISP) as the basis for 
the kernel language; he emphasizes 
that the concept of a kernel language 
is distinct from that of a user lan- 
guage, and that, while he feels the 
decision to go with Prolog has been 
justified by the first-phase results, 
there is no need to view that choice 



as static. In fact, one of the outcomes 
of the research so far has been to 
point out areas in which Prolog needs 
to be extended and modified. ESP is 
one of the results of that process. 
When I asked Dr. Fuchi whether he 
felt ICOT's commitment to Prolog-like 
languages might have been too nar- 
row and whether there would be any 
changes in that commitment in the 
future, he replied that, if anything, 
there would be an expanded effort in 
that direction. The kernel language for 
the "parallel inference machine" 
under development in the second and 
third phases of ICOT is called KL1; it's 
going to be based on Concurrent 
Prolog. 

It's never easy to evaluate the results 
of basic, research and development 
projects. By the time the dust settles, 
it's hard to remember what was new, 
what was useful, and what just 

{continued) 




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BYTE JAPAN 



didn't work. I can see two notable suc- 
cesses, though, for the first phase of 
ICOT's efforts. No matter where the 
research goes from here, it's plain that 
a lot of new hardware, a new operat- 
ing system, and some demonstration 
applications are up and running to- 
gether, all based on logic program- 
ming. Even though the demonstra- 
tions seemed a bit lame to me— 
mostly rehashed versions of various 
puzzles, textbook problems, and very- 
small-scale expert systems— no one 
can say "It'll never get off the ground." 
The other success, easy to overlook, 
is that Japan, often criticized for copy- 
ing, adapting, and perfecting existing 
technology instead of starting some- 
thing of its own, has made the world 
sit up and take notice of the fifth- 
generation project. Efforts like the 
European Economic Community's 
ESPRIT (European Strategic Program 
for Research in Information Tech- 
nologies) project, Great Britain's Alvey 
project, and projects in West Germany 
and France, not to mention the 
defense-oriented U.S. Strategic Com- 
puting program, have all been under- 
taken and funded in response to the 
lapanese initiative. 

Another remarkable aspect of the 
lapanese program is that it's being 
done in the open, accessible to the 
rest of the world. With the exception 
of the U.S., all of the representatives 
of the various international fifth- 
generation computing projects urged 
greater international research co- 
operation. (The U.S. has strongly 
oriented its efforts toward goals 
framed in terms of its national securi- 
ty, and even the budget figures since 
1982 are not in the public domain.) 
Whether this cooperation will amount 
to anything remains to be seen; the 
U.S.'s David Brandin, former president 
of the Association for Computing 
Machinery, quipped: "Everyone's talk- 
ing about it, but they all want the 
other guy to go first." Be that as it may, 
the lapanese, simply by having held 
this conference, have set an example 
of openness that deserves to be 
imitated. 

During the week following the con- 
ference, 1COT held an open house for 



participants at its headquarters in 
Mita, in central Tokyo. The atmo- 
sphere at the open house was much 
less formal than the conference ses- 
sions. We were able to ask the ICCT 
staff about specific details in their 
specialties, although we had a few lan- 
guage problems because of the low 
skill level of the Japanese-English in- 
terpreters who were available. 

During the open house one of the 
demonstrations of the PSI machine 
revealed an interesting aspect of 
Japanese computerdom. This par- 
ticular demonstration was intended to 
illustrate a limited English-language 
parsing (grammatical-analysis) system. 
Rather than using the keyboard to 
type in the sample sentence to be 
analyzed, the operator used a mouse 
to select individual words from 
among 30 or so choices that ap- 
peared on a menu. One of the 
reasons the Japanese are so inter- 
ested in mice is that few of them ever 
learned to type— in English or 
Japanese— except for professional 
typists and the rapidly expanding 
ranks of word-processor operators. 

Conference participants were also 
invited to participate in "technical 
visits" to the facilities of various com- 
puter and electronics manufacturers 
in and around Tokyo. A group of us 
visited the Hitachi Central Research 
Laboratory (located in the middle of 
several acres of beautiful woods near 
Kokubunji on the western fringe of the 
Tokyo megalopolis), where we got a 
close look at the Hitachi S-810 
supercomputer. 

In contrast to the Fifth Generation 
Project, the S-810 is Hitachi's entry in 
the commercial competition for the 
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puter. The S-810 has a peak process- 
ing rate of over 600 megaflops 
(million floating-point arithmetic oper- 
ations per second), somewhat faster 
than the U.S.'s mammoth Cray-L It 
achieves its speed by using a "pipe- 
line" architecture, in which certain 
operations can be carried out simul- 
taneously on large volumes of data. 
The Central Research Laboratory uses 
the S-810 mainly for VLSI (very-large- 

ieontinued) 



404 B YTE • APRIL 198^ 




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scale integration) circuit-design 
studies and for large-scale simulation 
studies in solid-state physics. 

The software for the S-810. however, 
is pathetically unsophisticated. Other 
than assembly language the only lan- 
guage available at the laboratory is 
FORTRAN. Now, 1 don't want to put 
down FORTRAN; it was the second 
computer language I ever learned 
(back in the days of FORTRAN II), and 
it is still one of the best tools around 
for handling complex numbers and 
other kinds of heavy-duty number 
crunching. And there are some fine 
optimizing compilers for FORTRAN 
(largely because of some of the main 
weaknesses of the language, like its 
lack of structure). But since the super- 
computer group is supposed to be on 
the leading edge of the push for im- 
provement in software productivity, I 
asked the Hitachi researchers what 
kinds of software tools were used to 



speed up program development and 
improve maintainability. I got blank 
stares. I then asked if they used some- 
thing like a RATFOR (Rational FOR- 
TRAN) preprocessor. I got more blank 
stares. I was obviously talking about 
something completely unknown to 
them. RATFOR is a preprocessor 
whose use is essentially free; the 
source code appears, for example, in 
the book Software Tools by Brian W. Ker- 
nighan and P. J. Plauger, and the ac- 
tual preprocessing is very fast, even 
on personal computers. The benefits, 
in terms of development speed and 
program maintainability and read- 
ability, are enormous. Even more to 
the point, such programs have been 
available and widely known in the U.S. 
and elsewhere for more than 10 years. 
Despite the existence of what was 
supposed to be an "optimizing vec- 
torizing" compiler that would produce 
machine code to take the best advan- 



tage of the S-810's parallel architec- 
ture, the Hitachi research lab people 
admitted that if they simply ran the 
same FORTRAN code used previously 
on their M-280 mainframe, a fast but 
conventional computer, the super- 
computer was no faster! To gain any 
significant speed advantage from the 
S-810, they needed to manually 
"tweak" the code. The conclusion 
from this and other similar experi- 
ences; The Japanese computer in- 
dustry doesn't yet have its act to- 
gether in the software department 
and won't, unless a lot more people 
in the industry sit up and take notice 
of how to get things done. 

Coming Up 

Next month I'll tell you about IBM 
Japan's test production of 1 -megabit 
dynamic RAM chips and about 
several new computers on the market 
here. ■ 



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406 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 283 



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Inquiry 181 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 407 



CIRCUIT CELLAR FEEDBACK 



Conducted by Steve Garcia 



Steve on MOVs 



My Circuit Cellar article in the December 
1983 BYTE, "Keep Power-Line Pollution 
Out of Your Computer," generated a large 
number of questions relating to various 
applications of metal-oxide varistors 
(MOVs). While letters I've answered in 
BYTE have addressed some of these 
specific questions, it seems worthwhile to 
present some additional information. 

I chose the Radio Shack MOV because 
it was easily obtainable, but there are 
several other sources. The V130LA10A is 
manufactured by General Electric and 
should be available from any local GE 
parts distributor or electronic parts sup- 
ply house. In addition, General Instrument 
and Panasonic manufacture similar units. 
The equivalent Panasonic part number is 
ERZ-C14DK20I and is available from a 
local Panasonic stocking distributor or 
from 

Digi-Key Corporation 

Highway 32 South 

POB 677 

Thief River Falls, MN 56701 

(800) 346-5144 

The part number is P7063. 

The General Instrument equivalent, part 
number S14K130, is available from 

Active Electronics 
POB 8000 

Westborough, MA 01581 
(800) 343-0874 

The V8ZA1 MOV shown in the article is 
designed for 5-volt DC circuits; the 
V130LA10A is designed for 130-volt AC 
circuits. 

The maximum continuous AC or DC 
voltage rating of an MOV should be about 
10 percent greater than the line or system 
voltage for which suppression is desired. 
A general rule is to select the lowest^value 
MOV that is equal to or greater than the 
maximum line voltage. For example, if the 
line voltage is 120 volts AC 120 x 1.1 = 
132 volts, and a 130-volt MOV should be 
the value selected. This is true for line-to- 
line, as well as line-to-ground, applications. 
Remember, if a possibility exists that any 
line connections can be made backward, 
they will (Murphy's law), so consider this 



3-10 AMP 

n> *V* — 



120 VAC 



V130LA10 

OR 

EQUIV. 



o- 



' \Y 

I 



Figure 1 : A fuse can help prevent a failed 
MOV from exploding. 

in your selection. Also, the V130LA10A 
MOVs mentioned in my article can be 
used for the common mode clamping 
(line-to-ground) on a 220-volt AC line (pro- 
viding that a polarized plug is used to en- 
sure proper connections) but will be 
underrated for the differential mode 
clamping (line-to-line). A General Electric 
V2 50LA20A, or equivalent, is a suitable 
unit. 

The energy rating for an MOV should be 
as high as practical and is often limited by 
physical space or economic considera- 
tions. When surges beyond their ratings 
are impressed, MOVs usually fail by short- 
circuiting. If there is no current-limiting 
protection, large amounts of energy are 
absorbed, and the MOV can explode This 
potential hazard can be minimized by the 
addition of a fuse, as shown in figure I , 
and physically shielding the MOV from 
surrounding circuits. The fuse should be 
placed to open the circuit when the device 
fails, so that loss of transient protection 
is known. 

Devices that connect across the power 
line at the service entrance to reduce the 
amplitude of large transients and lightning 
surges are available. They are two-pole, 
three-wire units that are designed for 
120/240-volt single-phase service and are 
designed to mount in a J/2-inch knockout 
in the service entrance box or at the 
weatherhead. Such devices are available 
at local electrical supply houses and are 
in the $20 range. They clip at voltages 
higher than the MOVs described in my ar- 
ticle so the MOVs should still be used. The 
General Electric Home Lightning Protec- 
tor GE Thyrite 9L15BC002, Square D 
Model J9200-10, and Delta Lightning 
Arrester (POB 1084, Big Spring, TX 79720, 



(915) 267-5268) are suitable units. 

All of the sockets on the power strip are 
in parallel, so it does not make any dif- 
ference where the MOVs are placed. They 
can be placed across one socket or spread 
out for ease of assembly. Should a tran- 
sient appear on the line the MOVs will 
clamp it to a safe level. The important 
thing is to keep the lead length short so 
that the clamping voltage is not com- 
promised. 

If your power strip contains a line filter, 
it is desirable to place the MOVs down- 
stream (equipment side) of the filter. The 
filter will attenuate some transients and 
may possibly extend the life of the MOV. 
Several companies manufacture power- 
line filters that are suitable for such ap- 
plications. They include 

Corcom Inc. 
1600 Winchester Rd. 
Libertyville IL 60048 
(312) 680-7400 
TVpe 5VK1 or 5VK3 

CORNELL-DUBILIER ELECTRONICS 

1 50 Avenue L 
Newark, NJ 07105 
(201) 589-7500 

TVpe APF511L 

Delta Electronic Industry USA 
1355 Yosemite Way 
Hayward, CA 94545 
(415) 785-5231 
Type 05DBAG5 

Potter Company 

POB 337 

Wesson, MS 39191 
(601) 643-2215 
TVpe 600 A 5 

These filters are equivalent to the Radio 
Shack part number 273-100 listed in my 
article, which is no longer being stocked. 
Write the manufacturers for additional in- 
formation and the address of your near- 
est supplier.— Steve 

Telephone-Line Protection 

Dear Steve 

1 enjoyed your article on the musical 
telephone bell greatly (July 1984). It's a 

[continued) 



408 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



COPYRIGHT© 1985 STEVEN A. C1ARCIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 




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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 409 



GARCIA FEEDBACK 



nice project, and I plan to construct one 
1\vo questions: You mentioned that the 
telephone company occasionally puts a 
200-V test signal on the line. Doesn't this 
have an adverse effect on modems and 
electronic equipment such as Demon 
Dialers? 

Also, as a practical matter, what are the 
risks from lightning to equipment con- 
nected to the telephone system? Again, 
I'm concerned about modems and elec- 
tronic dialers. I have seen protection 
devices marketed for telephone equip- 
ment, but 1 don't know if they're really 
needed and if they really work. 

Thanks for the information. 1 always look 
forward to your articles as the highlight 
of BYTE! 

Charles J. Okstein 
Willimantic, CT 

Commercial telephone equipment is 
designed to survive all normally occur- 
ring voltages on the telephone line. In the 
case of the Whimsi-Bell, the TCM1520A 
has the protection built into it and none 
of the other components are connected 



to the line. In some cases, a DAA (data- 
access arrangement) is required to pro- 
vide protection for both the equipment 
and the telephone lines. 

The telephone company incorporates 
lightning protection into the telephone- 
line system to protect its own equipment 
so customer equipment that meets the 
telephone company's specifications is 
pretty safe. Lightning arrestors are in- 
stalled where the lines enter customer 
buildings to protect equipment within. Of 
course, there is always the possibility of 
damage from a lightning strike on the 
lines in your immediate vicinity Local 
protection in addition to the normal ar- 
restors might be justified in some cases. 
—Steve 

Trump Card for TRS-80? 

Dear Steve, 

I read with interest your pair of articles 
on adding the Z8000 coprocessor to the 
IBM PC 1 do not have an IBM PC or any 
of the umpteen PC-compatible computers. 
I'm still stuck in the 8-bit world with a 



TRS-80 Model I and a Big Board II. I was 
wondering if you would consider (if it is 
possible) rewriting the loader program for 
Z80 machines. I am sure that there would 
be a large market for the board and soft- 
ware in the 8-bit market. 

If the above is not possible, would it be 
feasible to buy a Co-Power 88 (an 8088 
coprocessor) for the Big Board II and re- 
design the Z8000 board a little for use in 
my STD bus connector? I would think that 
the loader program for the Z8000 would 
have to be modified, but not as extensive- 
ly as rewriting the loader for use on a dif- 
ferent processor. 

Now, down to the business end. How 
much would it cost to buy the software 
mentioned in your article? And where can 
I find the following integrated circuits? 

Z8001 Processor 
Z8581 Clock Generator 
Z8030 Serial Communications Controller 
Z8036 Counter/Timer and 
Parallel I/O Unit 

Mark Hampton 

Cocoa, FL 

{continued) 




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410 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 285 



EVIE 

The Small Systems Journal 

70 Main Street 

Peterborough, New Hampshire ( 

Telephone 603/924-9281 






# 



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ot>^ 



ct^ G 



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0ear Subscribers* &c Aavertisers*y 



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cessinu System*, to- better service* &vtn* our subscribers* and our advertisers*. TIPS is* a- subdivision* 
o/ AIMS , ^lutafnated ^nauiry Jftanaaentent System/. 

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tAeir (Reader Service request into- oar- Pleader Service computer Subscribers* use- TIPS as* an/ a/ter- 
natioe*to^ tAe (Reader Service Jbostcard. TIPS eum/nates* tAe* maiAny and Aanafoiy deu\ys* of tAe (Reader 
Srvicejbosteard inquiry and any addtamai delay* at tAefu^uvnenb Aouse Overad TIPS cuts*(Reader 
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untA TIPS instructions* beAuv our (Reader Service indea>. 

jtdvertisers benefit too-. &he* direct* inquiry requests* tArouyA TIPS enabbe advertisers* 
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£B.S ^oA^frfrtAer in/vrmation on TIPS. (Reader Service (coordinator 



A McGraw-Hill Publication 



m 



CIARCIA FEEDBACK 



Since the Trump Card articles ap- 
peared, I have had many requests to 
modify the Trump Card hardware and 
software to operate on different ma- 
chines. Unfortunately each system would 
require a slightly modified hardware and 
software interface. The hardware and 
software design time to do this would 
severely cut into my other Circuit Cellar 
projects, so I am making no plans to con- 



vert the Trump Card project to any other 
system. 

The Trump Card has been tested on 
several PC-compatible systems using MS- 
DOS and has worked fine. Since the Co- 
Power 88 operates under MS-DOS. it is 
possible that the Trump Card software 
will work with the system. However since 
I have never tried this configuration, 1 
cannot guarantee that it will work. 



Wre inGoodCompany 

Whenl)u Program 

in BetterBASIC 




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ALSO AVAILABLE FOR THE TANDY 2000, 1200 AND 1000 



Under my 'Reward for Diligence" pro- 
gram discussed in the first part of the 
Trump Card article, I will send you the 
Trump Card software and the Trump Card 
manual for the cost of duplicating and 
mailing ($30). if you send me a picture 
of your Trump Card project 

The Zilog chips can be obtained from 
any of the Zilog distributors near you. In 
Florida, the Zilog sales offices are Dyne- 
A-Mark Corp. in Clearwater and Palm Bay 
and Technical Center-Zilog Corp. in Clear- 
water— Steve 

EMI 



Dear Steve, 

Because 1 live in a metropolitan area. 
EMI is a problem. Within a few blocks of 
my apartment are a 10-kW (100-kW ERP) 
FM transmitter, about six microwave 
relays, and possibly other transmitters. 1 
want to retrofit an old TRS-80 Model L 
printer, video display, and other periph- 
erals. What regions of a computer are 
most susceptible to EMI? Would replac- 
ing LS ICs with HCT or HC ICs increase 
immunity to effects of EMI? 

James Hawkins 
Kansas City MO 

Electromagnetic-interference problems 
in microcomputer systems can come 
from any number of sources. Usually 
electrical noise from an outside source 
is induced into cables that lead into (and 
out of) the computer. Sensitive circuits in 
the computer can also be affected if they 
are not properly shielded. 

Since the subject of electromagnetic- 
interference elimination is too long to be 
properly discussed in a letter 1 will refer 
you to an article I wrote that covers the 
subject in depth. The article, appropriate- 
ly called "Electromagnetic interference," 
can be found in the January 1981 BYTE. 
—Steve ■ 



Over the years I have presented many dif- 
ferent projects in BYTE. I know many of you 
have built them and are making use of them 
in many ways, 

I am interested in hearing from any of you 
telling me what you've done with these proj- 
ects or how you may have been influenced by 
the basic ideas. Write me at Circuit Cellar Feed- 
back. POB 582, Glastonbury. CI 06033 and 
fill me in on your applications. All letters and 
photographs become the property of Steve 
Garcia and cannot be returned. 



412 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 369 



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APRIL 1985 • BYTE 



413 



BOOKS RECEIVED 



Algorithm Design for Com- 
puter System Design. G. 
Ausiello, M. Lucertini, and 
P. Serafini. eds. New York: 
Springer-Veriag. 1984; 248 
pages, 17 by 24 cm, softcover. 
ISBN 0-387-81816-2, $18.30. 

Apple Home Companion, 
George Beekman and Dennis 
Corliss. Chatsworth. CA: 
Datamost. 1984; 360 pages. 
13 3 by 20.8 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-88190-318-3. $19.95. 

Apple Lisa: A User-Friendly 
Handbook. Joseph Coleman 
Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Tab 
Books. 1984; 320 pages, 18.8 
by 2 3.5 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-1691-8. $16.95. 

Apple Macintosh Users Hand- 
book, staff of Weber Systems. 
New York: Ballantine Books. 
1984; 328 pages. 14 by 21.5 cm. 
softcover. ISBN 0345-31840-4. 
$9.95. 

Apple Thesaurus, Aaron Filler. 
Chatsworth. CA: Datamost, 
1984, 896 pages. 21 by 27.5 
cm. softcover, ISBN 0-88190- 
346-9, $29.95. 

Apple He Programming, Book 
One, Phil Robinson. Englewood 
Cliffs. NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1984; 64 
pages. 21.5 by 28 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-13-0384 56-9. $10.95. 

Assembly Language Program- 
ming for the TRS-80 Model 
16 Dan Keen and Dave 
Dischert. Blue Ridge Summit. 
PA; Tab Books. 1984; 196 pages, 
13 by 21 cm. softcover, ISBN 
0-8306-1649-7. $10.25. 

The BASIC Explorer for the 
Commodore 64. Lee Berman 
and Ken Leonard. Berkeley. CA: 
Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1985; 288 
pages. 18.5 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-88134-139-8. 
$11 95. 

BASIC Fundamentals and 
Style. James S. Quasney and 
John Maniotes. Boston. MA: 
Boyd & Fraser Publishing Co., 



1984; 480 pages. 21 by 27.5 
cm. softcover. ISBN 0-8783 5- 
138-8. $2 5. Includes template. 

Beginner's Guide to Micropro- 
cessors, 2nd ed., Charles M. 
Gilmore. Blue Ridge Summit. 
PA: Tab Books, 1984; 224 
pages, 12.8 by 21 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-1695-0. $9.95. 

Business Computing: A Struc- 
tured Approach to BASIC on 
the PDP-11 & VAX-11. James 
F Peters 111 and Hamed M. 
Sallam. Reston. VA: Reston 
Publishing. 1985; 704 pages. 
21.3 by 27.5 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-83 59-0549-7. $21.95. 

THE Business Guide to the 
XENIX System. Jean L. Yates. 
Sandra L. Emerson, and Can- 
dice Basham. Reading. MA: 
Addison-Wesley. 1984; 496 
pages, 18.5 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-201-08847-9. 
$19.95. 

Business Power for Your 
Apple. Gregory R. Glau. New 
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. 
1984; 304 pages, 15.5 by 23.5 
cm, hardcover, ISBN 0-442- 
22779-5, $32.95. 

TVie C-64 Program Factory 
George Stewart. Berkeley, CA: 
Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1985; 336 
pages. 16 by 23.5 cm. softcover 
ISBN 0-88134-150-9. $12.95. 

The COMAL Handbook. 2nd 
ed„ Len Lindsay. Reston. VA: 
Reston Publishing. 1984; 480 
pages. 17.5 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-8359-0784-8. 
$18.95. 

Catalogue of Artificial In- 
telligence Tools. Alan Bundy. 
ed. New York: Springer-Veriag. 
1984; 180 pages, 16.5 by 24 cm, 
softcover. ISBN 0-387-13938-9. 
$17 



Commodore 64 Fun and 
Games. Volume 2, Ron leffries 
and Glen Fisher, New York: 
Warner Books, 1984; 188 pages. 
21.3 by 27.5 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-446-38183-7. $12.95. 

The Complete Book of Lisa, 
Kurt J. Schmucker. New York: 
Harper & Row, 1984; 3 52 pages, 
15.5 by 23.5 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-06-669008-0. $17.95. 

Computer-Based Instruction: 
Methods and Development. 
Stephen M. Alessi and Stanley 
R. Trollip. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: 
Prentice-Hall. 1985; 432 pages. 
17 5 by 23.3 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-13-164161-1-01. $21.95. 

The Computer Buyers Sur- 
vival Manual, C Amos 
Johnson. Blue Ridge Summit. 
PA; Tab Books. 1984; 224 pages. 
12.8 by 20.8 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-8306-1767-1. $9.95. 

Computer Care, Herb Fried- 
man. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 
Prentice-Hall. 1984; 182 
pages, 15 by 2 3 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-13-163833-5. $14,95. 

THE Computer Entrepreneurs, 
Robert Levering, Michael Katz. 
and Milton Moskowitz. New 
York: New American Library, 
1984; 496 pages. 16 by 2 3.5 
cm. hardcover. ISBN 0-453- 
00477-6, $19.95. 

Computer Graphics and Appli- 
cations, D. Harris. New York: 
Chapman and Hall. 1984: 184 
pages. 15.5 by 23.3 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-41 2-2 5090-X. $19.95. 

Computer Literacy. Warren 
Jones. Bobbie Jones, Kevin 
Bowyer, and Mel Ray. Reston, 
VA: Reston Publishing. 1983; 
304 pages. 17.5 by 23.5 cm. 
softcover, ISBN 0-8359-0860-7. 
$16.95. 



THIS IS A LIST of books received at BYTE Publications. U is not meant to be exhaustive: 
its purpose is to acquaint BYTE readers with recently published titles in computer science 
and related fields. We regret that we cannot review all the books we receive: instead, this 
list is meant to be a monthly acknowledgment of these books and the publishers who sent them. 



Computers and Information 
Processing World Index, 
Suzan Deighton. John Gurnsey. 
and Janet Tomlinson, eds. 
Phoenix, AZ: The Oryz Press, 
1984; 640 pages, 22 by 30 cm, 
hardcover, ISBN 0-89774-116-1, 
$74,50. 

Computing for Executives, 
1. W. Chadwick. Blue Ridge Sum- 
mit. PA: Tab Books. 1984; 280 
pages. 13 by 21 cm, softcover. 
ISBN 0-8306-1796-5. $12.95. 

Conquering the Commodore 
64 Kingdom. Bill L. Behrendt. 
Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice- 
Hall, 1984; 192 pages. 17.5 by 
23.5. softcover. ISBN 0-13- 
167917-1. $14.95. 

Cookbook of Creative Pro- 
grams for the Commodore 64, 
Robert Rinder. New York: New 
American Library. 1984; 222 
pages. 18 by 25.5 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-452-2 5571-6, $12.95. 

Creating the Perfect Data- 
base Using DB Master, Irish 
McClelland. Glenview, IL: Scott. 
Foresman and Co.. 1985; 2 56 
pages, 19.3 by 23.5 cm, soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-673-18039-5, 
$17.95. 

Data pro/McGraw-H ill Guide to 
Apple Software, 2nd ed.. 
Datapro Research Corporation. 
New York: McGraw-Hill. 1985; 
362 pages, 21.5 by 28 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-07-015406-6. 
$22.95 

Datapro/McG raw-Hill Guide to 
CP/M Software. 2nd ed.. 
Datapro Research Corporation. 
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985; 
400 pages. 21.5 by 28 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-07-015408-2, 
$22.95. 

Datapro/McGraw-Hill Guide to 
IBM PC Software. 2nd ed.. 
Datapro Research Corporation. 
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985; 
404 pages. 21.5 by 28 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-07-015407-4, 
$22.95. 

{continued) 



414 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



UP TO DATA 



There's only one segment of business which 
has the expertise to decipher reams of 
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around the world. You should keep them 
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For subscription information, call 1-800-258-5485. 



M 



BYTE 



THE SMALL SYSTEMS JOURNAL 

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Inquiry 237 



m LIONHEART 



BUSINESS & STATISTICAL SOFTWARE 



Explanatory books with professional compiled software; the new 
standard for statistical use. The influential Seybold Report on 
Professional Computing has this to say about Lionheart "...our sen- 
timental favorite because of its pragmatic approach to the basic 
statistical concepts... The thinking is that the computer merely facili- 
tates the calculations; the important thing is to be able to formu- 
late a problem correctly and to determine what type of analysis 
will be most valuable." 



BUSINESS STATISTICS .$135 

EXPERIMENTAL STATISTICS 115 

EXPLORATORY DATA ANALYSIS 

FORECASTING AND TIME-SERIES 115 

BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC 

FORECASTING 135 

DECISION ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES 

• LINEAR & NON-LINEAR PROGRAMMING . 75 

• PERT & CRITICAL PATH TECHNIQUES ... 75 

• MONTE CARLO SIMULATION 125 

• OPTIMIZATION 80 



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P.O. Box 379, ALBURG, VT 05440 
(514) 933-4918 



Announcing 

INTERACTIVE 
VIDEODISC WEST 

May 15-17, 1985 
Los Angeles Airport Hilton 

This conference includes presentations on 
Interactive Videodisc covering: 

Technologies 

Level IV Videodisc 

Sound over Still Frame 

Compact Disc/Read Only Memory (CD/ROM) 

Applications 

Education and Industrial Training 
Job Performance Assistance 
Point of Sale 
Public Information 
Archival Storage 

Program Design 

Authoring Systems 
Effectiveness Criteria 
Courseware Transportability 

Pre-conference tutorials are scheduled for May 14. 
Exhibits by Pioneer, Sony, JVC, 3M, EECO, DEC, 

and other leading suppliers of hardware, software, and 
interface systems will be available to conference 
registrants in an adjacent exhibit area. 
For further information contact: 

©Society for Applied Learning Technology 
! 50CulpeperSt.,Dept. B 
Warrenton, VA 22186(703)347-0055 




BOOKS RECEIVED 



The Designer's Guide to Disk 
Drives, Edward R. Teja. Reston. 
VA: Reston Publishing, 1985; 
142 pages, 18 by 24 cm. hard- 
cover, ISBN 0-83 59-1 268-X, 
$29.95. 

Designing Apple Games with 
Pizazz! Greg Minter and John 
Ruffner. Chatsworth, CA: 
Datamost, 1984; 328 pages, 
17.8 by 2 5.3 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-88190-387-6, $14 95. 

Dictionary of Computing and 
New Information Technology. 
A. I. Meadows, M. Gordon, and 
A. Singleton. New York; Nichols 
Publishing, 1984; 232 pages, 
13.3 by 20.5 cm. hardcover, 
ISBN 0-89397-197-9, $24.50. 

Digital Systems, Principles 
and Applications. 3rd ed., R. J. 
Tocci. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 
Prentice-Hall, 1985; 608 pages, 
18.3 by 24.3 cm, hardcover, 
ISBN 0-13-212374-6, $29.95. 

Discovering Science on Your 
Adam with 2 5 Programs, John 
Pellino. Mary Ellen Adamo, 
Sandra Dobrowlsky, and Donald 
P. LaSalle. Blue Ridge Summit, 
PA: Tab Books, 1984; 192 pages. 
19 by 23.5 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-1780-9, $9.95. 

Essential Applications for 
the IBM PC and XT, Patrick 
Plemmons and the editors of 
PC WorW. New York: Simon 
& Schuster, 1984. 2 56 pages, 
19 by 23.5 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-671-49279-9, $16.95. 

Financial Decision Making 
with Your TRS-80 Model 100. 
Leslie Sparks. Blue Ridge 
Summit, PA: Tab Books, 1984; 
142 pages, 18.5 by 23.5 cm, 
softcover, ISBN 0-8306-1 799-X, 
$9.95. 

T>4E First Book of Adam the 
Computer, Arthur Dent. Blue 
Ridge Summit, PA: Tab Books, 
1984; 208 pages, 19.5 by 23.5 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-8306- 
1720-5, $9.25. 

Fun, Games & Graphics for 
the Apple II. Me & lie, Paul 
Garrison. Blue Ridge Summit, 
PA: Tab Books, 1984; 316 pages, 
18.5 by 23.3 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-1752-3, $13.95. 

The Future of Semiconduc- 
tors, Computers, Robotics, 



and Telecommunications, 
editorial staff of Petrocelli 
Books. Princeton, NJ; Petrocelli 
Books, 1984; 264 pages, 16 
by 24 cm, hardcover, ISBN 
0-89433-2 59-7, $49.95. 

Games & Utilities for the 
TRS-80 Model 100. Ron Karr, 
Steven Olsen, and Robert 
Lafore. New York: New Ameri- 
can Library, 1984; 204 pages. 
18.5 by 23.5 cm, softcover, ISBN 
0-452-25577-5. $16,95. 

Getting the Most from Your 
Pocket Computer. Stephen 
F. Nowak. Blue Ridge Summit, 
PA: Tab Books, 1984; 236 pages. 
13 by 21 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-1723-X, $9.95. 

Getting Started in Pascal 
Programming, j. Camara and 
F. Puccetti. Blue Ridge Summit, 
PA: Tab Books, 1984; 206 pages, 
18.5 by 23.5 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-0588-6, $12.95. 

Handbook of Bar Coding Sys- 
tems, H. E. Burke. New York: Van 
Nostrand Reinhold, 1984; 240 
pages, 16 by 23 cm, hardcover, 
ISBN O442-21430-8, $42.50. 

Hidden Powers of the TRS-80 
Model 100. Christopher L. 
Morgan. New York: New Ameri- 
can Library, 1984; 2 54 pages. 
18.5 by 23 cm, softcover. 
ISBN 0-4 52-2 5 578-3, $19.95. 

A Hobbyist's Guide to Com- 
puter Experimentation. John 
D. Lenk. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 
Prentice-Hall. 1985; 300 pages, 
15.5 by 23.5 cm, hardcover, 
ISBN 0-13-392473-4, $23.95. 

The Home Computer Wars, 
Michael S. Tomczyk. Greens- 
boro, NC: Compute! Publica- 
tions, 1984; 318 pages, 14 
by 21.5 cm, softcover, ISBN 
0-942386-75-2, $9.95. 

How To Copyright Software, 
M. J. Salone with Stephen Elias, 
legal ed. Berkeley, CA: Nolo 
Press, 1984; 2 56 pages, 21 
by 27.5 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-917316-79-7. $21.95. 

How To Program Your IBM PC 
Color & Graphics. Carl Ship- 
man. Tucson, AZ: HPBooks, 
1984; 320 pages, 21.5 by 27.5 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-89586- 
265-4, $21.95. 

(continued) 



Inquiry 350 



416 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



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your own 16-bit IBM-compatible 
micro 



As computers move into 
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The Department of Labor estimates 
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Critics hail the new Sanyo as 
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Sanyo. 

As you build the Sanyo from the 
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Using utility programs, you'll check out 8088 
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directions will guide you all the way right 
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Your NRI Course Includes 
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If the card is missing write to NRI at the 
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We'll Give You Tomorrow. 

IBM is a Registered Trademark of International 
Business Machine Corporation. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 417 



Return Coupon to: Lifeboat™ Associates 
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Now use your Clipboard, Note 
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Inquiry 127 




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Inquiry 104 









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1 1U0W Power Supply, 1 Hitec Keyboard, 1 
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Multifunction Board, 1 360K Floppy Disk 
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DISK DRIVE 

Shugart SA455 l A Drive $110.00 

Shugart SA712 10 MB 

Hard Disk Drive $475.00 

TEAC of.B . Plnppy Drive $115.00 

Miniscribe 10MB H.D. w/Controller 

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The Best Quality 130W Power Supply 

$150.00 

(110/220V) Same Dimension as IBM Power 

Multifunction Card $195.00 

Case $90.00 

Hitec Keyboard $130.00 

Color Graphic Card $170.00 

Hercules Compatible Mono 

Chrome Card $195.00 

Floppy Disk Controller Card 
w/Cable $120.00 

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BOOKS RECEIVED 



Learning Commodore 64 Logo 
Together. Kenneth P. Goldberg. 
Bellevue, WA: Microsoft Press, 
1984; 446 pages, 18.5 by 215 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-91484 5- 
24-1. $14.95. 

Logo for Apple Computers: A 
Self-Teaching Guide, R. W. Haigh 
and L E. Radford. New York: 
John Wiley & Sons 1984; 320 
pages, 17 by 25 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-4 71 -8802 3-X. $14.95. 

Macintosh: the Appliance of 
the Future, Gerard Lewis. 
Wayne, PA: Banbury Books, 
1984; 376 pages, 18.8 by 23.5 
cm. spiral-bound. ISBN 0-88693- 
031-6, $14.95. 

Mastering BASIC on the 
TRS-80 Model 100, Bernd 
Enders. New York: New Ameri- 
can Library. 1984; 350 pages, 
18.5 by 2 3.5 cm, softcover. 
ISBN 0-452-2 5 57 5-9, $19,95. 

Mastering Multiplan, David 
Bolocan, Saechin Kim, Ray King, 
and Lauren Singer. Blue Ridge 
Summit, PA' Tab Books, 1984; 
128 pages, 19.5 by 23 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-8306-1743-4, 
$11.50. 

Mastering the Tandy 2000, 
Dan Keen and Dave Dischert. 
Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Tab 
Books, 1984; 160 pages, 19 
by 23.5 cm, softcover, 
ISBN 0-8306-1829-5. $10.95. 

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of 
Electronics and Computer 
Technology Sybil P. Parker, ed. 
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984; 
592 pages, 16 by 23.5 cm, hard- 
cover. 0-07-045416-7, $32,50. 

Methods and Tools for Com- 
piler Construction. B. Lorho, 
ed. New York: Cambridge 
University Press. 1984; 416 
pages, 15.5 by 23.5 cm, hard- 
cover, ISBN 0-521-26843-5. 
$49.50. 

Micro Accounting, Steven 
E. Yoder and Sherry D. Knight. 
Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice- 
Hall. 1985; 282 pages, 17.5 by 
23.5 cm. softcover, ISBN 0-13- 
580085-4, $15.95. 

MOD4 by Jack, Jack Klein. 
Durango, CO: Crest Software, 
1984; 218 pages, 15 by 22.5 cm, 
spiral-bound, ISBN 0-930615- 
00-X, $9.95. 



Modula-2 for Pascal Pro- 
grammers, Richard Gleaves. 
New York: Springer-Verlag, 1984; 
160 pages, 15.5 by 23.5 cm, 
softcover. ISBN 0-387-96051-1, 
$16.95. 

More BASIC: A Guide to 
Intermediate-Level Computer 
Programming, Shelley Lipson. 
New York: Holt. Rinehart and 
Winston. 1984; 80 pages, 14.5 
by 21.5 cm, hardcover, ISBN 
0-03-070722-6. $9.95. 

THE One Minute Methodology, 
by E. Z. Systems as told to Ken 
Orr. Topeka. KS: Ken Orr and 
Associates. 1984; 70 pages, 
14.5 by 22.3 cm, hardcover, 
ISBN 0-9605884-3-4, $8.95. 

PAYCALC: How To Create 
Customized Payroll Spread- 
sheets, Thomas E. Tbwle. Blue 
Ridge Summit, PA: Tab Books, 
1984; 112 pages, 18.5 by 23.5 
cm, softcover. ISBN 0-8306- 
1694-2, $15.50, 

Perfect Software 2.0 for 
Your IBM PC & Compatibles. 
Howard H. Wade and Martin 
Lenk. Reston. VA: Reston Pub- 
lishing, 1984; 222 pages, 
21 by 28 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-83 59-5495-1, $21.95. 

Practical Finance on the 
TRS-80 Model 100. S. Venit 
and Diane Burns. New York: 
New American Library, 1984; 
174 pages. 18.5 by 23.5 cm. 
softcover, ISBN 0-452-25576-7. 
$15.95. 

Programming Languages: 
Featuring the IBM PC and 
Compatibles, Marc Stiegler and 
Bob Hansen. New York: Baen 
Enterprises, 1984; 448 pages, 
13 5 by 21 cm. softcover. 
ISBN 0-671-55929-X. $9,95. 

Programming Languages and 
Their Definition, Lecture Notes 
in Computer Science #177, 
H. Bekic. New York: Springer- 
Verlag, 1984; 288 pages, 16.5 
by 24.3 cm. softcover, 
ISBN 0-387-I3378-X. $13. 

Programming Your Own 
Adventure Games in Pascal, 
Richard C. Vile Jr. Blue Ridge 
Summit, PA: Tab Books. 1984; 
318 pages, 18.5 by 23.5 cm, 
softcover. ISBN 0-8306-1 768-X, 
$13.95. 

{continued) 



422 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 93 



THE IBM AT: 

ENHANCE IT RIGHT 
RIGHT NOW 

With The Bernoulli Box. Winchester Performance And Reliability. 
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proprietary technology has proven The 
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Call 1-800-556-1234, exL 215 for the dealer 
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Inquiry 204 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 423 



Inquiry 



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Readings on Cognitive 
Ergonomics: Mind and Com- 
puters. G. C. van der Veer. M.|. 
Tauber T. R. G. Green, and P. 
Gomy, eds. New York: Springer- 
Verlag. 1984; 276 pages. 16.5 by 
24 cm. softcover, ISBN 0-387- 
13394-1. $13 

The Second Beginner's Guide 
to Personal Computers for 
the Blind and Visually Im- 
paired. Diane L Croft, ed. 
Boston, MA: National Braille 
Press, 1984; 214 pages, 21.5 by 
28 cm. spiral-bound, no ISBN. 
$12.95. 

The Second Book of Machine 
Language, Richard Mansfield. 
Greensboro. NC: Compute! 
Publications 1984; 464 pages. 
15.5 by 23 cm, spiral-bound. 
ISBN 0-942386-5301. $14.95. In- 
cludes floppy disks. 

Sing a Song of Software. 
Leonard |. Soltzberg. Los Altos. 
CA: William Kaufmann, 1984. 96 
pages. 18.5 by 18.5 cm. hard- 
cover. ISBN 0-86576-073-X. 
$9.95. 

60 Business Applications Pro- 
grams for the TRS-80 Model 
100 Computer, Terry Kepner 
and Mark Robinson. Glenview. 
IL: Scott, Foresman and Co. 
1985; 288 pages, 19.5 by 23.5 
cm. softcover, ISBN 0-673- 
18052-2, $17.95. 

The Small Business Computer, 
William E. Grieb Jr. New York: 
Baen Enterprises. 1984; 288 
pages, 13.5 by 20.8 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-671-55907-9, 
$6.95. 

Software Engineering Con- 
cepts. Richard Fairley. New 
York: McGraw-Hill. 1985; 
384 pages, 17 by 24 cm. hard- 
cover. ISBN 0-07-019902-7. 
$3495 

Statistical Programs in 
BASIC. Ronald D. Schwartz and 
David T. Basso. Reston, VA: 
Reston Publishing, 1985, 224 
pages, 17.5 by 23.5 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-8359-7106-6. 
$16.95. 

TKISolver for Engineers. Vic- 
tor E. Wright. Reston. VA: 
Reston Publishing. 1984; 432 
pages. 17.8 by 2 3.3 cm, soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-8359-7711-0. 
$19.95. 



IHe TRS-80 Color Computer 2 
User's Guide, Bill Brewer, Mark 
Brownstein, and Roger C 
Sharpe. New York: Macmillan 
Publishing, 1984; 128 
pages, 13.3 by 21 cm. soft- 
cover. ISBN 0-02-008820-5, 
$5.95. 

The TRS-80 Graphics Book. 
Dennis F. Tanner. New York; 
Van Nostrand Reinhold. 1984; 
2 56 pages, 21.5 by 28 cm, soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-442-28299-0, 
$16.45 

Teach Your TRS-80 to Pro- 
gram Itself! David Busch. Blue 
Ridge Summit. PA: Tab Books. 
1984: 236 pages, 13 by 20.8 
cm. softcover, ISBN 0-8306- 
1798-1. $11.50. 

Teaching Mathematics and 
Science: Patterns of Micro- 
computer Use. Richard |, 
Shavelson, John D. Winkler. 
Cathleen Stasz. Werner Feibel. 
Abby E. Robyn. and Steven 
Shaha. Santa Monica, CA: Rand 
Corp.. 1984; 56 pages. 15.3 
by 22.8 cm. softcover. ISBN 
0-8330-0595-2. $4. 

UNIX for People, Peter Birns. 
Patrick Brown, and John C C 
Muster. Englewood Cliffs. 
N): Prentice-Hall, 1985; 560 
pages, 18 by 24 cm, hard- 
cover, ISBN 0-13-937459-0, 
$29.95. 

Urban Transportation Net- 
works. Yosef Sheffi. Englewood 
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985: 
416 pages. 15 by 23.5 cm. hard- 
cover, ISBN 0-13-939729-9, 
$45,95. 

The Users Guide to CP/M 
Systems. Tony Bove and Cheryl 
Rhodes. New York: Baen Enter- 
prises, 1984; 318 pages. 13.5 by 
21 cm. softcover. ISBN 0-671- 
55921-4. $8.95. 

Using BASIC on the IBM PC. 
Angela Trombetta and Michael 
Tlombetta. Reading, MA: 
Addison-Wesley. 1984: 496 
pages, 21.5 by 27.8 cm. soft- 
cover, ISBN 0-201-06516-9. 
$19.95 

Using Symphony. David Paul 
Ewing and Geoffrey LeBlond. In- 
dianapolis, IN: Que Corporation. 
1984; 730 pages, 18.5 by 23.5 
cm, softcover, ISBN 0-88022- 
124-0, $19.95. ■ 



424 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 54 



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CERMETEK MODEMS 



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cluded with the modem, and you're ready to 
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microelectronics 

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Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3565 
(408) 752-5000 




INFO-MATE 
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Inquiry 64 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 425 



Buy with Confidence... 
Our Record Is Clean! 



IBM PC 
SOFTWARE 

Alpha Software 

Data Base Mgr II $179 

Electric Desk (Jr) 199 

Arrays, Inc. 

Home Acct. + ....$ 90 

Home Acct. w/ 
Tax Advntg $139 

Central Point 

Copy II PC $34 

CompuView See Special 

Connecticut Software 

Printer Boss 

w/ Letter Boss $ 79 

Above w/ Side Kick... 119 

Creative Software 

Creative Bundle Box 
(Filer, Cafe Writer)... .$109 

Digital Research 

Concurrent Cal I 

Fortran 77 

(CP/MorDOS) 299 

Personal Basic (CP/M). 99 

CP/M-86 49 

Others Call 

Dow Jones 

Market Analyzer $229 

Market Manager 1 89 

Spreadsheet Link 179 

Ecosoft, Inc 

Microstat $239 

Enertronics 

Energraphics $219 

w/ Plotter Option 279 

FastwareThor $245 

Financier, Inc 

Financier II $1 19 

Tax Series 105 

Fox & Geller 

Grafox $159 

RGraph 159 

FYI 

Superfile $139 

FYI 3000 259 

Sort Facility.. 99 

Harvard Software 

Project Manager $249 

Lifetree 

Volkswriter Deluxe $155 

Volkswriter Scientific. 359 

Living Videotext 

Think Tank (256K) $119 

MDBS 

Knowledge Man $275 

Menlo Corp, 

In Search $279 



Micropro 

Wordstar ProPak 

(WS, CS, MM,SI) $275 

Wordstar 2000 289 

ProPak Plus (WS, 

CS, MM, SI, TM) $369 

Microrim 

R-base4000 $265 

R-base Clout (V 2.0)... 139 

R-Writer 95 

Prog Interface 259 

Microsoft 

Flight Simulator II $ 39 

Project 1.01 169 

CComp 319 

Basic Comp 249 

Word 1.15 229 

MuMarh/MuSimp 179 

Microstuf 

Crosstalk $ 99 

Morgan Computing 

Prof Basic $ 79 

Trace 86. 99 

Multimate (V 3.3) $289 

Northwest Analytical 

Statpak $365 

Open Systems 

Acctg Programs... ea$4l9 
Buy 3 or more .ea 399 

Peter Norton Computing 

Norton Utilities $ 50 

Pea entree 

Series 8 Account- 
ing Modules $359 

Samna Corp. 

Samna Word III... 349 

Satellite Software 

Word Perfect w/ Sp... $255 

Software Arts 

Spotlight $109 

Software Publishing 

(PC Jr. Compatible) 
PFS: File, Graph 

Write, Plan ea $ 89 

PFS: Report 79 

PFS: Access, Proof 59 

Sorcim 

Supercalclll $249 

Star Software Systems 

Acctg Partner $219 

Acctg Partner II 599 

Supersoft Call 

Warner Software 

(PC Jr. Compatible) 

Desk Organizer $129 

Westminster Software 

Pertmaster Call 

. . . and many more! 



dBASE II CORNER 

Anderson-Bell 

Abstat $289 

Ashton-Tate 

dBase II Call 

dBase III (V 1.1} Call 

Framework (V 1.1).. Call 

Friday Call 

Fox & Geller 

dGraph $159 

Quick Code 159 

Quick Report 159 

dUtil 58 

Sensible Designs 

dProgrammer $199 



SOFTWARE 

Alpha Software 

Apple-IBM 

Connection $169 

Typefaces 69 

Arrays, Inc. 

Home Acct $ 59 

FCM 79 

BPI Call 

Broderbund 

Bank Street Writer ....$ 45 
Bank Street Speller.... 45 
Others Call 

Cdex 

All Trng Progs ea $ 49 

Digital Research ..... Call 

Dow Jones 

Market Analyzer $229 

Market Manager 189 

Spreadsheet Link 179 

Eduware Call 

Living Videotext 

Think Tank $ 99 

Micropro 

Pro Pak (WS, 

SS, MM, SI) .$349 

Microsoft Call 

Pea entree 

Back to Basics $149 

PeachPak 
Series 40 or 80 $229 

Penguin Software .. . Call 
Software Publishing 

PFS: File, Graph, 
Report ea $ 79 

Spinnaker Call 

Xerox Education 

Sticky Bear Series. .ea $ 35 



MACINTOSH 
CORNER 

SOFTWARE 

Dow Jones 

Straightalk 59 

Human Edge 

Sales Edge $195 

Mgmt Edge 195 

Intermatnx 

MacPhone $159 

Living Videotext 
Think Tank $119 

Main St. Software 

Main St. Filer $225 

Microsoft 

MacBasic V 1.01....$ 99 

MacChart 85 

MacWord 139 

MacFile 139 

Monogram 

Dollars & Sense $139 

Software Publishing 

PFS: File,Report . ea $ 89 

T/Maker 

Click Art $ 39 

Telos Software 
Filevision $109 

HARDWARE 
Davong 

Disk Drives Call 

Kensington Mtcroware 

Surge Su pressor 45 

Modem $399 

Memorex 

2Vi" Diskettes $ 49 

Quadram Call 

Tecmar 

Disk Drives Calf 



CP/M 



All prices below are for 
8" standard. 

ATI 

All Trng Prog's...... ea $ 52 

CompuView.. See Special 
Digital Research 

DR Assem & Tools 

(80 or 86) $119 

CP/M 2.2 99 

C Basic Compiler 

(CB-80) 289 

SPP(86) 149 

Display Mgr 80 239 



Digital Research 

(continued] 

Display Mgr 86 279 

Pascal MT+ 80 199 

Pascal MT+ 86 349 

CP/M86 99 

C Basic Comp 86 349 

PL/186 399 

Access Mgr 86 239 

C Compiler/ 

Language 86 199 

Fortran 77 86 199 

Infocom 

Deadline $ 49 

Starcross, Suspended, 

Zork, I, II, III ea 39 

Micro Pro 

WordStar $250 

InfoStar 265 

Pro-Pak (WS, 

MM, SI, SS) $359 

All Others Call 

Microsoft Call 

Microstuf 

Crosstalk $ 99 

Northwest Analytical 

Statpak $365 

Oasis 

Word Plus $110 

Punctuation & Style. ... 99 

Supersoft 

Disk Doctor $ 74 

ST. PATRIOTS 
DAY SPECIAL! 

CompuView 

Products, Inc 

Powerful productivity 
pkg including: 

> Vedit+ - Full screen 
editor. Multiple-file 
editing, sort files, 
arithmetic operations, 
etc. 

> V-Print - FYint 
formatter. 

> V-Spell - Spelling 
corrector w/ 60,000 
word dictionary. 

Special pricing on 

3 packages $299 

OTHER SPECIALS 

Vedit $119 

Vedit+ 159 

V-Print 89 

V-Graph 89 

Transyst 89 

Prices good thru 
March 30, 1985 




APPLE/ 



ALS 

CP/MCard.. $269 

Smarter™ 11 119 

Z-Engine ..... 139 

CCS 

7711 Asynch Serial $ 99 

Microsoft 

Softcard + $449 

Prem Softcard (HE) 295 

Microtek 

Printer l/F $ 75 

Dumpling -16K 169 

Dumpling-GX 89 

Orange Micro 

Grappler + w/ buffer . $1 75 

Prometheus 

Versacard $159 

VtcWx 

Videoterm VT-602 $249 

Ultraterm 249 



/I 



AST Research 

Six Pak 4- 64K 

(exp384K, S/P, Clk)..$265 
MegaPlus 64K, (Cl/Cal, 

S Port, 512K cap 

w/Megapak) $269 

Extra ports available 

for Megaplus and 

I/O Plus II (Game, 

PorS) $ 40 

Mega pak 256K up- 
grade for Megaplus . Call 

B YA D, Inc. 

DSH (2/80, 64K 
Ram, Ser Port, 
DR-CP/M2.2) $495 

Maynard Electronics 

Floppy Drive Cntrlr.... $119 

w/ Par Port 169 

w/ Ser Port 179 

Sandstar Call 

Orange Micro 

Mr. Chips Call 



Orchid Technology 

the "Orchid Blossom" 
(To 384K, Ok w/ alarm, 
SAP ports, ram disk, 
disk caching, upgrade- 
abletoPCNet) Call 

Quod ram 

Quadboard 64K, (exp 

384K, Clk/Cal, S&P 

Ports, Software) $269 

Microfazer Stack Printer 
-P/P8K(exp512K)....$139 

-S/P 8K (exp 64K) 149 

-S/S 8K (exp 64K) 149 

Quadlink 64K Memory 

(allows Apple SW to 

run on IBM/PC) $469 

Other Products Call 

Tec mar 

Graphics Master $479 

Captain's Bd w/64K... 299 

1st Mate 259 

2nd Mate 250 

3rd Mate 379 

Jr. Captain (128K,C,P). 329 
Jr. 2nd Mate (C,P) 129 

Xedex/Microlog 

Baby Blue $325 

Baby Blue II 525 

DISPLAY CARDS 

Fredericks/Plan- 
tronict Colorplus... $399 
Hercules 

Graphics Board $339 

Color Board 199 

MA Systems 
PC Peacock 
Color Board ..,$249 

Paradise 

Display Card 
(clr/monochrome) . $349 
Modular/Display.... 309 
Quadram 

Quadcolorl $199 

Quadcolorll 389 

Tecmar 

Graphics Master.... $479 



Hay os 

Smartmodem 300 $195 

Smartmodem 1200.... 475 
Smartmodem 1200B... 399 



Prometheus 

Promodem $399 

Quadram 

Quadmodem $529 

US Robotics 

Auto-Dial 300/1200... $459 

S-100 Modem 349 

Password 325 

Zoom Telephonies 

Networker w/o SW . . . $1 09 



Amdek 

300A Amber $149 

310A 199 

300 Clr 265 

500 Or RGB 385 

600 Clr HR 455 

700 Clr Ultra HR 535 

NEC 

JB1201-12" Green $169 

JB1260-12" Green 119 

JC1216RGB 429 

PGS 

HX12RGBOr $489 

MAX 12 189 

SR12 (690x480 Res)... 639 
DoublerCard 175 

Quadram 

Quadchrome $489 

Sanyo 

8112 12" HR Green.... $169 

Taxan 

440 $679 

420L 499 

Zenith 
135(RGBorcomp}....$499 

136 669 

Others Call 



CDC 1800 $179 

CorvusHd Call 

Datamac 

Trustor 10H (for 
Macintosh, lie, PC).., Call 

DavongHd Call 

l-Omega 

Bernoulli Box Call 



Maynard Electronics 

Maynstream: Port- 
able back-up for 
HD System 27 (incl 

1 cntrlr cd) ..$1495 

for System 60 (incl 

1 cntrlr cd) $1695 

Cntrlr Cds ea 175 

Cartridge 450' ,.ea 35 
Cartridge 600' ..ea 45 

Mountain, Inc. 
Fil eSafe Combo 

Disk/Tape Pack for 

the IBM PC or XT 

For more info Call 

Tall Gran 

For Wisconsin customers Call 

Tandon TM-100-2 $175 



C. Itoh Electronics, Inc. 

Starwriter 

F10-40P (40cps) $999 

A10-20S (20cps) 529 

Diablo 

630 ECS Call 

Juki Industries 

6100 $399 

NEC Call 

Okidata 82-93 Call 

Quadram 

Quadjet Call 

Star Micronics Call 

WotexTlOU $399 

Transtar 

T-130P&S $659 

T-315P- Dot Matrix.. 489 
T-120P&S 475 

. . .and much more. 



PLOTTERS 

Amdek 

DXY-100.. $599 

Amplotl! 899 

Enter 

Sweet P Six Shooter... Call 

Houston Instruments Call 

Panasonic 

VP6801P Plotter $1375 



3M, Maxell, Verbatim 
Ultra Magnetics Call 



MISC. 

Alpha-Delta MACC 8" 
Surge Protector $ 69 

Computer Accessories 

Power Directors 

P2MtrBase $109 

P12IBMPC. 145 

P22 Stand Alone.. 75 

Electronic 
Protection Devices 

Lemon /EC I $ 38 

Lime /EC II 55 

Orange /EC IV 75 

Hauppoae 

8087 w/o sftwe $149 

8087w/sftwe 255 

80287 AT Chip w/o... 289 

Other Products Call 

Kensington 

Masterpiece $109 

Keytronic 

KB 5150..... $169 

KB 5151 175 

KB 5151 Dvorak 175 

KB 5150 Jr 159 

KB 5151 Jr..... 175 

KB 5149 (Jr 

N umeri c K eypad) .... 89 

Mouse Systems 

PC Mouse $159 

Touchfone Technology 

Touchtone II 
(PC Keypad) $169 

Versa Computing 

VersaWriter $239 

WICO 

Joysticks (Ap) $ 39 



A variety of complete 
PC compatible systems 
are available at Oryx. 
For assistance in 
determining your needs 
use our technical lineT 
We will be happy to 
provide full support. 



POUCYt 

► Wisconsin residents add 5% for sales tax. 

► Minimum $4.00 for shipping, handling and insurance 
for orders to $200. 

► For orders over $200, add 2/2% for shipping, handling 
and insurance. 

► For cash prepayment of orders $200 or more, add 
ONLY 2% for shipping, handling and insurance. 

► Foreign — either add 15% handling & shipping 
(Int'l money order) or inquire. 

► Prices are subject to market fluctuations. 

► All items subject to availability 



WE WELCOME: 

► Visa, MasterCharge and American Express. (No charge for credit cards.) 

► Corporate, government or educational volume purchases, please ask for special accounts 
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WORKING HOURS: 

Monday- Friday 8:30-6:00 • Saturday 10:00-2:00 {Ordering Lines only) • Central Time 
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Inquiry 420 for Hardware. Inquiry 421 for Software. Inquiry 422 for April Specials. 




ORYX SYSTEMS, INC. 

CRAFTSMEN OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY 

1 800 826-1589 



— 1 800 472-3535 



WISCONSIN 



425 First Street • PO. Box 1961 

Wausau, Wisconsin 54401 

INT'L TELEX: 260181 ORYX SYS WAU 



Collector edition 

BYTE COVERS 



The Byte covers shown below are available as beautiful Collector Edition Prints. 
Each full color print is 11 in.x 14 in, including a 1 1/2 in. border, and is part of an 
edition strictly limited to 500 prints. Each print is faithfully reproduced from the 
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signed and numbered by the artist, Robert Tinney A Certificate of Authenticity 
accompanies each print attesting to its quality and limited number. 



Collector Edition Prints are carefully packaged flat to avoid bending, and are 
shipped UPS. The price of each print is $30, plus $3 per shipment for postage and 
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is only $25. 

To order your own favorite Byte cover as a beautiful Collector Edition Print, use 
the convenient coupon below. Visa or MasterCard orders may call 1-504-272-7266. 








#17 Winter Computing S30 # 18 Seventeen Seventy- Six $30 #19 Crystal Ball $30 #20 Digital Arts $30 






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Send me the following Prints ($30 ea., or $25 ea. for 4 or more). 
QTY. TITLE & PRINT NO. AMOUNT 
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D Please send me vour color brochure. TOTAL $ 



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428 BYTE* APRIL 1 98 5 



PROGRAMMING INSIGHT 



LOAD ASSEMBLER 

ROUTINES 
FROM BASIC 



by Douglas F. Yriart 



This method enhances 
the maintainability of your programs 



MICROSOFT BASIC-80, version 5.x for 
CP/M, includes a number of state- 
ments and functions for calling 
machine-language subroutines from 
BASIC and defining their starting ad- 
dresses. It does not. however, include 
a statement for loading these sub- 
routines. This article presents a way 
to automatically assemble and load 
them. BASIC-80 includes all the tools 
you need to reserve memory for your 
subroutines and to load them from 
the hexadecimal-format file put out 
by Digital Research's assembler, 
ASM.COM. The BASIC program 
doesn't need to know anything about 
the subroutine except the name of the 
.HEX file in which it is stored. This file 
contains all the necessary information 
for the load, including how much 
memory is needed. 

With this method of loading assem- 
bly-language subroutines, you don't 
need to modify the BASIC program 
every time you change, add, or delete 
a few bytes in the assembly-language 
subroutine. In addition, you can use 
the same BASIC routine in numerous 
programs to load assembled subrou- 
tines. This method brings significant 



benefits in simplicity and maintain- 
ability. 

Assembly-Language 
Subroutine 

First, you need an assembly-language 
subroutine for the BASIC program to 
call. For example, TESTASM (see 
listing 1) draws an outline of the star- 
ship Enterprise and then returns con- 
trol to the calling program. (Editor's 
note: The unassembled source code for 
TESTASM is available from BYTEnet 
listings. The telephone number is (603) 
924-9820.| 1\vo important points 
should be considered about the as- 
sembly-language subroutine The first 
one is its origin. You need to start at 
as high an address in memory as pos- 
sible so that the BASIC program will 
have sufficient room for its execution. 
Second, the subroutine must exit 
through an RET instruction if you 
want control to return to the BASIC 
program. After you assemble the sub- 
routine with ASM.COM, you don't 
need to make it into a machine-code 
file with L0AD.COM. The BASIC pro- 
gram works with the .HEX file. And, 
if you try to create a runnable .COM 



file, you will need a lot of disk space. 
L0AD.COM will attempt to create a 
file the size of the entire memory 
taken up by the subroutine, including 
any unused space below the origin. 
T^ble 1 contains TEST. HEX. pro- 
duced by assembling TESTASM. 
Notice in listing I that the program ar- 
bitrarily starts at location 9C40 hexa- 
decimal (in the leftmost column on 
the line with the ORG statement). This 
same number appears in positions 
four through seven on the first line of 
table 1. L0AD.COM uses the first nine 
positions and the last two positions 
of each record or line of the .HEX file 
for its own purposes. The remaining 
pairs of hexadecimal digits are the in- 
struction, operand, and data bytes 
you want to load into memory. The 
first two positions after the colon at 

[continued) 
Douglas F Yriart (6805 Melrose Dr., 
Mclean, VA 22 101 ) is Chief of the U.S. Of- 
fice of Personnel Management's Computer 
User Center in Washington, DC. He is a 
Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve 
and was one of its first two members to be 
recalled to active duty to attend the resident 
course at the Uaval War College. 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 429 



ASSEMBLER ROUTINES 



Listing 1: TEST.PRN, 


a listing of the assembled routine. TEST.ASM. This 


test program is for use in 


developing a BASIC program to read and POKE the 


.HEX file of assemi 


?ly-language 


routines into memory. This program draws a 


picture of the starship Enterprise. 




TEST.ASM 


version 1.0 1/13/84 




by C 


), F, Ynart — January 1984 




Test 


program for use in developing BASIC program 




to read and 


poke HEX file of assembly-language 




routines into 


memory. This program draws a 




picture of th 


e starship Enterprise. 




EQUATES 




0009 = 


Dbuff 


equ 


9 :BDOS print buffer 


0005 = 


bdos 


equ 


5 


location of BDOS 


000D = 


z r 


equ 


Odh 


carriage return 


OOOA = 


f 


equ 


Oah 


line feed 


0009 = 


at.) 


equ 


9 


horizontal tab 




START OF PROGRAM 


9C40 


start: 


org 


40000d 


9C40 114C9C 




Ixi 


d.data 


point to picture 


9C43 CD479C 




call 


print 


display it 


9C46 C9 




ret 




done 




print: 






9C47 0E09 




mvi 


Cpbuff ;get proper call in c 


9C49 C30500 




jmp 


bdos ;do it 




STORAGE AREA 




note 


DATA: 


is made up of any printable or control characters 






that w 


II draw or write an appropriate display for user 






to look at. 






The display is "plain vanilla" characters that can be 






found 


on any CP/M machine; no special screen control 






or graphics characters are used for portability. 


9C4C ODOAOAOAOA 


data: 


db 


crjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjf.lfjf.lf 


9C58 OAOAOAOA 




db 


If.lfjf.lf 


9C5C 0909202020 




cib 


tab.tab: 


9C81 ODOA 




do 


crjf 


9C83 0909202020 




db 


tab,tab,' 


i i 




9CA6 270D0A 




cib 


39.cr.lf 


9CA9 0909202020 




GO 


tab.tab/ ' '.39,' / /' 


9CC6 ODOA 




db 


crjf 


9CC8 0909202020 




db 


tab,tab: --',39,32,39.' //--,' 


9CE7 ODOA 




db 


crjf 


9CE9 0909202020 




av. 


tab.tab,' ' ',39 


9D07 ODOAOA 




db 


crjfjf 


9D0A 0909202020 




CO 


tab.tab,' THE USS ENTERPRISE - NCC-1701' 


9D2E 0D0A24 




db 


cr.lf;$' 


9D31 


end 







the beginning of each record tell 
LOAD.COM how many bytes of data 
are in the record. 

The BASIC Program 

Lets look at the BASIC program itself, 
READASM.BAS (see listing 2 or 
BYTEnet Listings (603) 924-9820). It 
accomplishes four tasks: 

1 . It finds out where to load the as- 
sembled subroutine and reserves 
enough memory for it. 

2. It loads the subroutine. 

3. It passes control to the subroutine 
executing it— if instructed to do so 

4. It restores the subroutine's reserved 
memory for use by the BASIC pro- 
gram before ending. First, the pro- 
gram must find the top of the TPA 
(transient program area)— the area of 
memory available for user programs 
that is not taken up by CP/M— so that 
it can restore the full amount of 
memory to the BASIC program at the 
end of the run. 

Figure 1 provides a memory map of 
CP/M-80 version 2.2. It is important to 
notice the number of bytes added to 
the address of the CCP (console com- 
mand processor) to find the BDOS 
(basic disk operating system) and 
BIOS (basic input/output system) 
areas. (Addresses are hexadecimal.) 

The address of the CP/M BIOS is 








BIOS 


CP/M- 8 


BDOS 




CCP 


AVAILABLE FOR 
USER PROGRAMS 


TPA 


T 

CP/M-80 

i 


BASE PAGE 



27 FF TOP OF RAM 



Figure 1: Hexadecimal memory map of 
CP/M. The xx and zz are dummy 
arguments representing the most 
significant byte in an address that changes 
depending upon memory size. 



430 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



ASSEMBLER ROUTINES 



stored in bytes one and two of the 
base page (BP). Intel 8080 machine 
code stores the least significant byte 
(LSB) of the memory address first, 
followed in byte two by the most 
significant byte (MSB). Starting at line 
140, the program captures this byte 
by executing a PEEK at location two. 
The beginning of the CCP is found by 
subtracting 16 hexadecimal from the 
MSB of the BIOS address. 

In lines 150-170, the starting ad- 
dress of BDOS, the top of the TPA, is 
found by doing some string arithmetic 
on the MSB of the CCP address. The 
VALQ function evaluates strings that 
start with &H as hexadecimal 
numbers. The HEX$() function returns 
a character string containing the hexa- 
decimal digits of the number eval- 
uated. You can use this to build a 
string composed of &H, the MSB of 
the CCP address, and an LSB of 00. 
The VAL() function turns this character 
string into a number to be assigned 
to the variable TOP. By adding 800 
hexadecimal to TOP, you have the ad- 
dress of the beginning of the TPA. The 
addresses found in high memory are 
numbers beyond the range of BAS1C- 
80's valid integers. Therefore, you 
can't use integer variables to hold ad- 
dresses in the program. 

Reserving Subroutine 
Memory 

To reserve memory for the assembled 
subroutine, you use the CLEAR, 
ADDRESS statement, which sets 
aside memory starting at the AD- 
DRESS parameter. The CLEAR state- 
ment zeros all numeric variables and 
sets all string variables to null. Any 
value that you need to use after clear- 
ing memory must be saved in an area 
unaffected by the CLEAR, so that you 
can retrieve it later. In this example 
you need to save the name of the 
.HEX file, the value of TOP, and the 
loading address for the subroutine. 
Lines 240-300 read the first record 
of the .HEX file and extract the ad- 
dress needed to load the subroutine. 
This starting address is in positions 
four through seven of the record (lines 
280-300). Notice the use of string 

{continued) 



Data bytes 




in record 




i 


Data bytes (two characters each) 


Load 


/ \ 


address 


/ \ 


1 1 


/ \ 


v 1 v | 


/ \ 



Table I: TEST HEX is the hexadecimal-file output from assembling 
TEST. ASM. The table is annotated to show the various parts of the records, 
data is hexadecimal. C\" is inserted to show parts of the record.) 



Overhead 



10|9C40|00114C9CCD479CC90E09C305000DOAOAOA|98 

1 1 9C50 1 000 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 AOA09092020 1 3 A 

10|9C60|0020202020202020202020202020202020|F4 

1 1 9C70 1 0020202C2D2 D2D2 D2D2D2 A2D2D2 D2D2D2D 1 32 

10|9C80|002C0D0A09092020202C2D2D2D2D2D2D2D|B8 

10|9C90|002D2D2D2D2D2D2D202020602D2D2D2020|02 

10|9CA0|002D2D2D2D2D2D270D0A09092020202060|76 

10|9CBO|002D2D2D2D2D2D2D2D2D202D2D27202020|OE 

10|9CCO|002020202F202FODOA0909202020202020|CD 

10|9CD01002020202C2D2D2D2720272D2D2D2D2D2D|F5 

10|9CEO|002D2F202F2D2D2CODOA09092020202020|7A 

10|9CF0|002020202020602D2D2D2D2D2D2D2D2D2D|A2 

10|9DOO|002D2D2D2D2D2D270DOAOA090920202054|37 

10|9Df0|0048452055535320454E54455250524953|BF 

10|9D20|0045202D2D2D204E43432D31 373031 0D0A|46 

01|9D30|0024|0E 

0000000000 \ 

\ Overhead (1 byte) 

\ 
"End-of-file" record 



All 



Listing 2: READASM.BAS, a program in Microsoft BASIC-80 to load and 
run assembly-language routines. 



10 ' 

20 PRINT 

30 PRINT TAB(10);' 

40 ' 



<<< READASM.BAS >>> 
'ASSEMBLY-LANGUAGE FILE LOADER":PRINT 



50 ' 
60 ' 
70 ' 
80 ' 
90 ' 
100 
110 
120 
130 
140 
150 
160 
170 
180 
190 
200 
210 
220 
230 
240 
250 



Demonstration of method to read and load assembly- 
language programs from a HEX file for calling from 
inside a BASIC-80, version 5.x, program. 

by D. F. Yriart — January 1984 

First find the beginning of BIOS — so full memory can 
be restored after the program runs. 



BIOS=PEEK(2) 

CCP = BIOS-&H16 

TOP = VAL( (, &H" + HEX$(CCP) + "00") 

TOP = TOP + &H800 

PRINT "TOP OF TRANSIENT PROGRAM AREA = 

PRINT " HEX." 



MSB of BIOS entry address 
beginning of CCP 
compute top of 
transient program area 
HEX$(TOP); 



Open the HEX file and read the first line to get 
starting address for the routine. 



HEX.FILE$="TEST.HEX" 
ON ERROR GOTO 1210 



name of file to load 
trap missing file error 



{continued} 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 431 



ASSEMBLER ROUTINES 



arithmetic to convert the text number 
to hexadecimal so the program can 
use it. 

In order to protect the information 
needed after the CLEAR, you must 
store it somewhere outside of the 
BASIC program's normal workspace. 
This program uses the buffer area that 
CP/M uses for passing commands to 
the CCP. This buffer area begins at 
memory location 80 hexadecimal. 
Lines 370-470 build a 20-character 
string of data and use POKE to put 
it into the buffer area, You must store 
memory addresses as character 
strings because they are too large to 
store in a single byte. 

Line 520 reserves the memory 
needed for the subroutine by doing 
a CLEAR of memory up to 1 byte 
below the subroutine's starting ad- 
dress. The data is retrieved from the 
CCP buffer in lines 570-650. Lines 
670 and 680 serve the cosmetic func- 
tion of trimming trailing blanks off the 
filename. 

Subroutine Usage 

The BASIC program reads the .HEX 
file one record at a time captures the 
data from position 10 to 2 bytes from 
the end of each record, and uses a 
POKE to put 1 byte at a time into 
memory. This is accomplished by two 
nested WHILE/WEND loops. TWo 
variables control the operation: BYTE 
contains the next address on which 
the POKE statement operates, and 
COUNT is the data-string position of 
the next byte to be extracted. 

The outer loop (lines 790-940) 
reads records until it encounters the 
end of the file. Line 830 extracts the 
data portion of each record for pro- 
cessing by the inner loop (lines 
860-920). The inner loop steps 
through the data string two characters 
at a time— two hexadecimal digits 
make up one byte. Line 880 converts 
the string data into values that can be 
put into memory with a POKE. 

Once the BASIC program has read 
the last record from the .HEX file, the 
worst is over. The subroutine is in re- 
served memory above the BASIC 
work area. All that remains to be done 
is to test it out, restore the top of 



260 
270 
280 
290 
300 
310 
320 
330 
340 
350 
360 
370 
380 
390 
400 
410 
420 
430 
440 
450 
460 
470 
480 
490 
500 
510 
520 
530 
540 
550 
560 
570 
580 
590 
600 
610 
620 
630 
640 
650 
660 
670 
680 
690 
700 
710 
720 
730 
740 
750 
760 
770 
780 
790 
800 
810 
820 
830 
840 
850 
860 
870 
880 



OPEN "l",#1,HEX.FILE$ 

IF EOF(1) THEN 1170 ' test for empty file 

LINE INPUT#1,A$ ' read the first record 

CLOSE 1 

START.ADDRESS = VAL("&H" + MID$(A$, 4, 4)) 

PRINT "Loading will start at ";HEX$(START.ADDRESS); 

PRINT " hex." 

Build a string out of the name of the HEX file, the 
top of TPA address, and the loading address. 

SAVE.IT$ = SPACE$(20) 
MID$(SAVE.IT$,1, 12)= HEX.FILES 
MID$(SAVE.IT$,13,4) = HEX$(TOP) 
MID$(SAVE.IT$,17,4)«HEX$(START.ADDRESS) 

Store the 20 bytes of data in the CCP buffer at 80h. 

FOR l°/o = 1 TO 20 

B YTE = ASC(M I D$(SAVE . IT$, l%, 1 )) 

POKE &H7F + l°/o,BYTE 
NEXT l% 

Set top of memory available to BASIC 1 byte below 
the loading point. CLEAR zeros all variables. 

CLEAR, (START. ADDRESS- 1) 

Recover the name of the HEX file, the top of TPA 
address, and the starting address for loading. 

SAVE.IT$ = SPACE$(20) 

FOR l%=1 TO 20 

MID$(SAVE.IT$,I%,1)==CHR$(PEEK(&H7F + I%)) 
NEXT l% 

HEX. FILES = MID$(SAVE.IT$,1, 12) 

TOP = VAL("&H" + MID$(SAVE.IT$,13,4)) 

START.ADDRESS = VAL("&H" + MID$(SAVE. ITS, 1 7,4)) 

BYTE = INSTR(1 .HEX.FILES, CHR$(32)) ' trim blanks off 
HEX.FILES = LEFT$(HEX.FILE$,BYTE-1) ' filename 

Read in the HEX file one record at a time. Break it 
into bytes and POKE them into memory. 

PRINT HEX.FILES;" is being loaded now." 

OPEN "l",#1, HEX.FILES 

BYTE = START.ADDRESS ' first address to POKE 

Begin processing each record here. 

WHILE NOT EOF(1) ' as long as there is another record 

LINE INPUT#1,A$ ' read a record 

A$ = MID$(A$,10,LEN(A$)-11) ' just the bytes to POKE 
COUNT =1 ' byte position in record 

WHILE COUNT < LEN(AS) ' while there are bytes 

B$ = MID$(A$,COUNT,2) ' get a "text" byte 
VALUE = VAL("&H" + B$) ' convert it to hex 



432 BYTE* APRIL I985 



ASSEMBLER ROUTINES 



890 

900 

910 

920 

930 

940 

950 

960 

970 

980 

990 

1000 

1010 

1020 

1030 

1040 

1050 

1060 

1070 

1080 

1090 

1100 

1110 

1120 

1130 

1140 

1150 

1160 

1170 

1180 

1190 

1200 

1210 

1220 

1230 

1240 

1250 

1260 

1270 

1280 

1290 

1300 

1310 

1320 



POKE BYTE.VALUE 

COUNT = COUNT + 2 ' increment position 
BYTE = BYTE + 1 ' increment address 

WEND ' process another byte 



WEND 



loop back to process next record 



The HEX file has been loaded into memory, now it 
can be CALLed. 

*** Real application would go here. *** 

CLOSE 1 

PRINT BYTE-START.ADDRESS;' l Bytes were loaded." 

INPUT "DO YOU WANT TO TRY CALLING THE ROUTINE"; A$ 

IF A$="Y" THEN CALL START. ADDRESS ELSE GOTO 1110 

PRINT:PRINT 

PRINT "!!! IF YOU SEE THIS MESSAGE THINGS PROBABLY "; 

PRINT "RAN RIGHT!!!" 

Restore top of memory and exit. 

CLEAR, TOP 

PRINT TAB(10);"*** END OF DEMO ***" 

END 

Error traps 

PRINT "THE FILE IS EMPTY- 
CLOSE 1 
END 

Missing file 
IF ERR <> 53 THEN 1280 

PRINT HEX.FILES;" IS NOT ON THE LOGGED DRIVE." 
PRINT "*** READASM SAYS GOODBYE ***" 
IF TOP = THEN END 
CLEAR, TOP 
END 

All other errors 
PRINT "ERROR #";ERR;"OCCURRED IN LINE";ERL 
PRINT "*** READASM CANT CONTINUE ***" 
IF TOP = THEN END 
CLEAR, TOP 
END 



BASIC memory to its original con- 
tents, and exit gracefully. Line 1040 
will call the subroutine. Whether you 
call the subroutine or not. the pro- 
gram exits via line 1110, which clears 
memory back up to the bottom of the 
BDOS. (You may come up a few bytes 
short since we calculated the address 
using only the MSB.) 

The error traps beginning at line 
1170 tell you when something goes 
wrong. But more important, they re- 
store the top of memory before you 
exit the program. 

Summary 

This article discusses an automated 
method for loading an assembly-lan- 
guage subroutine into memory where 
it can be called by a BASIC program, 
despite the fact that BASIC-80 version 
5.x has no specific command to do 
this. The benefits of this method are 
simplicity and maintainability for both 
the calling BASIC program and the 
assembly-language subroutine. The 
BASIC program doesn't need to know 
anything about the subroutine until 
run time, when it reads the pertinent 
information from the assembled .HEX 
file. This provides you with the ability 
to modify the assembly-language sub- 
routine without affecting the BASIC 
program that calls it. ■ 



REFERENCES 

I. Hogan, Thorn. Osborne CP/M Users Guide, 
2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: Osborne/McGraw- 
Hill. 1982. 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 433 




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Inquiry 365 



APRIL I985 • BYTE 435 



LETTERS 



[continued from page 32) 

sophistication in the manner that past 
Apple customers have. Hence there is no 
reason to widely disseminate technical in- 
formation to the customers. 

The dominant theory in the industry dur- 
ing the last 18 months seems to be that 
the age of the hacker is over. I belong to 
this endangered species. 1 make just 
enough from software sales to pay for my 
computer habit. It seems to me that rather 
than my time being over, I am more im- 
portant to Apple than at any time in the 
past, f have bought two Apple lis in the 
last six months (the He personally and a 
lie at work). I am often asked to advise 
people about what computer to buy. 

In the past 1 have been able to recom- 
mend Apple because there was so little 
likelihood that my friends could possibly 
outgrow the company. They might 
become more accomplished hackers than 
I am, but they could not plumb the depths 
or exhaust the expansibility of their 
Apples. Every change in Apple policy that 
I have observed during the past year has 
made this less true. 

John R. Raines, M.D. 
St Paul, MN 

Who Pays for Copy 
Protection? 

As a composer of music that incorporates 
much synthesizer work. I have seen the 
development of MIDI as a real and prac- 
tical boon. In my own studio I now use a 
microcomputer with a Passport MIDI in- 
terface (Apple-compatible version) to con- 
trol Yamaha synthesizers (DX-9 and RX-1 5). 

Frankly, the available software and most 
specifically its copy protection, is working 
against its own benefits. 

1 use MIDI/4 from Passport as a se- 
quence recorder and player, f would like 
to use DX-Pro from Yamaha (yes, it works 
after a fashion on the DX-9) as a patch 
editor and recorder. A session with both 
the other day proved unmanageable. 
Since both are severely copy-protected, to 
use one right after the other requires a 
cold boot for each. This takes time and 
requires powering down the computer. It 
seems to me that in the real, working 
world of synthesis it would be sensible if 
both programs could be copied onto the 
same disk (or hard drive or RAM disk) and 
accessed back and forth. Well, copy pro- 
tection renders this impossible. The 
Passport software, by the way, comes with 
a backup disk. The DX-Pro from Yamaha 
does not! Disks do not hold up well to the 
rigors of travel, which means that one 



blown sector and . . . 

There is a legitimate need for protecting 
the interests of software writers and ven- 
dors. However, if this occurs at the ex- 
pense of the end users in the form of 
diminished usefulness, it is protecting the 
interests of no one. 

I am frankly not interested in generating 
a long and philosophical debate on these 
issues. I am interested in getting my 
system up and running efficiently so I can 
get on with making music. 

Michael W. Gilbert 
Amherst, MA 

Computer vs. Human 
Responsibility 

The January BYTE editorial ('Autonomous 
Weapons and Human Responsibility" by 
Phil Lemmons, page 6) makes the impor- 
tant point that humans are responsible for 
the acts of their computers, including the 
act of computer-generated war. In this 
context, however, your strident attack on 
Walter Mondale— for his alleged ignorance 
or demagoguery in opposing "Star Wars" 
technology— is both surprising and unfair. 

Because nuclear weapons in orbit 
around the earth could more rapidly reach 
their targets, the time for an offensive or 
defensive response would be reduced to 
a very few minutes. (Even if the initial 
space system is defensive in nature, it is 
naive to think that the inevitable counter- 
measure would not be an offensively 
oriented one) The potential, then, for con- 
temporaneous human intervention in the 
response decision— let alone for the 
somber human reflection most of us 
would wish for such a fateful decision— is 
effectively eliminated. In other words, and 
disregarding the responsibility issue for 
the moment, the act of making nuclear 
war from space would of necessity be 
relegated to computers. 

None of this is to say that the computer 
would be "responsible" for the resulting 
devastation, a nuclear villain we should 
fear and abhor As you stated, "Computers 
follow sequences of human instructions." 
But is it ignorant or demagogic to suggest 
that the nuclear hair trigger not be split 
to the point where only a computer has 
the time to effect, or avoid, our annihila- 
tion? I think not, and 1 think this was Mr. 
Mondale's well-taken point. 

At the risk of sounding anticomputer, 
which I earnestly am not, a further point 
must be made about the reliability of com- 
puters. Computers, including lovingly at- 
tended micros and NASA's multi-million- 
dollar systems, do, at times, screw up. 



Chips do fail and programs do have bugs. 
Sometimes the things just shut down; 
other times, to our horror, they continue 
to run and produce spurious or confound- 
ing results. Sure, humans (designers or 
engineers or programmers or manufac- 
turers or users) are again responsible. And 
certainly the politician who, knowing these 
unfortunate facts of technological life, con- 
signed our fate to such systems could not 
deny culpability. But, again, is it ignorant 
or demagogic to oppose entrusting 
civilization to these all too fragile 
machines? 

I agree that BYTE is not the place, and 
that neither I nor most BYTE readers are 
the people, to discuss the technical merits 
of the "Star Wars" proposal. But, similar- 
ly, I don't think BYTE is the place to 
dismiss concerns about this proposal as 
senseless computer phobia or worse. 

It is ironic and unfortunate that you 
chose Walter Mondale as the object of 
your venom. For, indeed, it was Mr. Mon- 
dale who suggested that a human being 
remain directly, consciously, and personal- 
ly responsible for the ultimate human deci- 
sion. His notion that President Reagan's 
proposal, which would necessitate that 
this decision be made by a computer, en- 
dangers us is neither frivolous nor an ab- 
dication of human responsibility for com- 
puter actions. But it is both presumptuous 
and irresponsible when we, as computer 
devotees, assume a shrilly defensive 
posture that fails to acknowledge the limits 
of our technology or knowledge. 

Sean Bleck 
New York, NY 

Regarding your January editorial, I believe 
you have not given Mr. Mondale enough 
credit. 

To make the Strategic Defense Initiative 
work, enemy missiles would have to be 
struck within the first five minutes of their 
launch, thus not leaving enough time to 
have the President decide whether or not 
to respond, for reasons 1 will be happy to 
detail at your request. 

I for one am not ready to change the 
decision-making process on whether to 
start shooting at the Russians from a Con- 
ference of the President, SAC. and a Con- 
gressional Committee to a prepro- 
grammed computer. 

How can aerospace programmers 
"assume responsibility" for the decision 
that only the President of the United 
States should make? Even if they're "will- 
ing to," I for one am not willing to give 
them that responsibility, even if you are. 

Further, the most brilliant programmers 



436 BYTE- APRIL 1985 



LETTERS 



working 1000 years could not possibly 
foresee all possible scenarios. Only human 
judgment has the flexibility to deal with 
all possible new original situations, at least 
at the present. A computer may be pro- 
grammed by human beings, but a com- 
puter is not a human being. Human beings 
should use computers to aid calculation, 
information gathering, and for advice. 

They should never turn control of their 
destiny over to computers, however, no 
matter how well programmed. In any 
event, we have not yet amended the Con- 
stitution to give aerospace-company pro- 
grammers and computers the power to 
declare or initiate war. 1 for one am not 
in favor of any move to change it to let 
such happen. 

Don Slaughter 
Seattle, WA 

A very big WELL DONE to Phil Lemmons 
for his editorial on Autonomous Weapons 
and Human Responsibility." 

Phil pointed out that we must take re- 
sponsibility for our decisions, even if it ap- 
pears that a computer made the decision 
for us. This is an important lesson for all 
of us. We must not avoid responsibility for 
our decisions. 

Beyond the specific issue addressed. I 
was delighted to see BYTE addressing 
moral and social issues as well as technical 
ones. During this past century, our tech- 
nology has leapt far ahead of our morali- 
ty Vigorous dialogue in our journals is one 
good way to help close this gap. 

Byron Weber-Becker 
Goshen, IN 

Having heard Walter Mondale use the 
word "computer" in an attack on President 
Reagan, you snapped back a reply without 
having thought through Mondale's com- 
plaint. When liberals do this, it is called 
a "knee-jerk reaction." 

Mondale's point was that for Reagan's 
"Star Wars" defense plan to work, incom- 
ing missiles would have to be shot down 
before they spew their multiple, indepen- 
dently targeted (MIRVed) nuclear bombs. 
Thus, there would be only a few minutes 
between detection, identification, and con- 
firmation of the launch and the time when 
the decision to attack should be made or 
not. It would not be feasible to get this in- 
formation to the president {any president) 
and have her analyze it and make an in- 
formed decision in time. The decision 
would have to be left up to the computers. 

Why is this a problem? Not because 
computers can make mistakes. Perish the 
thought. (Has a computer really never 



made a mistake? Are electronic com- 
ponents really infallible?) Rather, human 
programmers make mistakes. The problem 
Mondale was pointing to about "Star 
Wars" (only one of many problems!) is that 
programmed computers make mistakes. Only 
a computer fanatic would have taken this 
as an attack on computer hardware as op- 
posed to software. 
The mistake you have made is similar to 



the following: Jane says. "We ought to have 
tough drunk-driving laws because weav- 
ing, lane-hopping cars can do terrible 
damage." Phyllis (editor of a major auto- 
mobile magazine) replies, "There she goes 
again. Cars aren't malevolent. It's the peo- 
ple driving the cars that are at fault." But 
we all know that. Phyllis has simply missed 
the point. 

{continued) 



Faster CAD Input 



The GTCO DIGI-PAD is a fast trac- 
ing device, a function the mouse 
can't perform at all. It's an absolute 
screen pointing device for direct 
cursor control. It can also provide 
direct, simple menu selection. The 
GTCO DIGI-PAD is a digitizer 
tablet in sizes including 12"x 12", 
ll # x 17*, 20*x20*, 24 ff x36 fl , 36*x 
48* and 42 "x 60". 

The DIGI-PAD is easily interfaced 
to PCs and is compatible with most 
PC/CAD software, such as AutoCAD™ 
andCADPLAN™. 



The digitizer surpasses all 
other input devices for tracing and 
pointing and menuing. GTCO 
digitizers use patented electromag- 
netic technology for years of silent, 
maintenance-free operation. 

Ask your dealer about the 
GTCO DIGI-PAD. 



• DIGI-PAD and Micro DIGI-PAD are registered 
trademarks of GTCO Corporation. 

™ AutoCAD is a trademark of Autodesk Inc. 

™CADPLAN is a trademark of Personal CAD 
Systems, Inc. 




Inquiry 175 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 437 



LETTERS 



Finally, it is worth noting that the mistake 
Phil Lemmons and Phyllis have made is 
the same mistake made by those who say 
"Guns don't kill people; people kill peo- 
ple'' as if that were disputed by those in 
favor of rational gun-control laws. 

David Weinberger 

Assistant Professor of Philosophy 

Chair, Peace and Conflict 

Resolution Studies 

Stockton State College 

Pomona, Nj 

Phil Lemmons replies: 
It makes little sense to argue against or- 
bital weapons on the ground that they 
would have to be controlled by com- 
puters. It makes much sense to reject or- 
bital weapons because they put terrible 
destructive power only minutes from our 
cities. No control, human or artificial, 
could make us feel comfortable with 
devastation constantly poised above. 
Those who oppose orbital weapons 
should concentrate on resisting the 
weapons rather than the control system. 



Regardless of the components of the con- 
trol system, humans would bear respon- 
sibility including responsibility for com- 
puter malfunctions. 

Travesty in B 

My colleagues and I were interested to see 
the article "A TYavesty Generator for 
Micros by Hugh Kenner and Joseph 
O'Rourke (November 1984, page 129). 
since we've had a similar program running 
here for a couple of years, written not in 
Pascal but in the new language B. The in- 
teresting thing about the B version of the 
program is that it is only 24 lines long, 
compared with the 284 lines of Pascal. 
Consequently we thought that other BYTE 
readers might like to see our version. 

B is a very simple language, about as 
easy to learn as BASIC but the big dif- 
ference is that B has very powerful data 
types, and it's thanks to these that pro- 
gramming in B is so easy. 

To understand the program you have to 
know a little about these data types: B has 



Listing I: A Travesty program in B. The four lines at the bottom were produced 
from "Maru had a little lamb" as input, using \- 2- 3- and A-grams, 
respectively. 

HOWTO TRAVESTY document USING n GRAMS: 
PUT """(n-1), { } IN gram, followers 

FOR line IN document: ANALYSE \ Analyse each line in turn 
FOR count IN {1 . . 10}: GENERATE \ 10 lines of imitation 
ANALYSE: \ Analyse one line 
FOR char IN line: 

UPDATE followers FOR gram WITH char 

APPEND char TO gram 
UPDATE followers FOR gram WITH " " \ Treat line end as space 
APPEND " " TO gram 
GENERATE: \ Generate one line 
PUT IN length 

CHOOSE gram FROM keys followers \ Choose a random start 
WHILE gram in keys followers AND (length < 50 OR char< > "): 

CHOOSE char FROM followers[gram] 

WRITE char 

PUT length + 1 IN length 

APPEND char TO gram 
WRITE / \ Write a newline 

HOWTO UPDATE followers FOR gram WITH char: 
IF gram not'in keys followers: PUT { } IN followers[gram] 

INSERT char IN followers[gram] 

HOWTO APPEND char TO gram: 
PUT (grarrf char)@2 IN gram 

1: nhwaso Idm r ttvncd vetsvaen ryam wnMhuaaiaa Iryulitlab 

2: evere Mad ad ts go Mamb snts s s ad lamb flits it 

3: ry hat Marywhery was was fleece that lamb ittleece 

4: te as snow and everywhere that lamb was white as white 



texts, which are strings of characters. For 
instance, "hello" is a text. There is no 
character data type; you just use a text of 
length one, such as "a" or "6." There are 
operators on texts: a * b joins the two texts 
a and b, a™n repeats the text a n times, 
and a@n gives the tail of text a starting at 
the nth character. 

B also has lists, which are sorted lists of 
elements. For instance, {"B"; "Pascal"; 
Smalltalk"} is a list of texts, as is {"a"; 
"b": "c"}. and { z"}. { } is the empty list. 
You can insert a new element e in a list X 
with INSERT e IN X. Although lists are kept 
sorted (alphabetically in the case of texts), 
the program doesn't use this fact. 

The program deals with what the 
original article calls n-grams: that is, groups 
of n letters from a text. The B program 
works by associating with each group of 
n-\ letters a list of letters that may follow 
it. Thus, when dealing with trigrarns for the 
sentence "Nonsense imitation can be dis- 
concerting," for the letters ' W you get the 
list { ": "<:"; "s"}, and for "ns" you get 
{ "«"; "e" } . This association is done using 
the table data type, which is a generaliza- 
tion of arrays; in most other languages, 
you may index only arrays with integers 
(or similar), while in B you can use any 
type. In this program a table called followers 
is used, indexed by texts and giving lists 
of characters, so that with the above 
sentence you get followers |"ms"| = {>"; 
"e } for instance. You can find out which 
indexes have been used for a table; "keys 
followers" gives the list of such indexes. 
{ } is also the empty table. 

Another interesting feature of the pro- 
gram is that it is trivial to modify so that 
it works with words instead of characters. 
For instance, UPDATE would remain 
identical. 

B is an interactive language and there 
are implementations for machines with 
UNIX available at the cost of the media, 
and shortly for the IBM PC. Anyone who 
would like to know more about B or its 
implementations is welcome to write to 
me. 

Steven Pemberton 

B Croup 

CW1 

Postbus 4079 

1009 AB Amsterdam 

The Netherlands 

Circuit-Board Catastrophe 

1 have become the victim of an event, 
totally beyond my control, that has 
nothing less than shut down my computer 
services. 



438 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



LETTERS 



I own an LNW Model II microcom- 
puter—a powerful work-alike of the TRS-80 
Models I and 3. In late June of this year 
my expansion board developed a prob- 
lem, rendering the facilities on the board 
useless. This system-expansion circuit 
board includes half of the system memory, 
serial and parallel interfaces, floppy-disk 
controller, and clock circuits. Because the 
problem (I suspected the floppy-disk con- 
troller) developed and was reported less 
than one year after purchase, the com- 
puter was still covered by warranty. 

On July 7, 1984, after telephoning LNW 
Research, i was given a "return authoriza- 
tion number." As instructed by Technical 
Services at LNW Research, removing the 
factory-built expansion board from the 
computer unit would not void my warran- 
ty. I then removed the circuit board, as in- 
structed, and had it packaged and shipped 
to LNW Research via United Parcel Ser- 
vice. The "return authorization number" 
was clearly labeled on the package and 
also taped directly onto the circuit board. 

After about 10 days and several follow- 
up telephone calls, LNW finally acknowl- 



edged receipt of my circuit board. 1 made 
repeated telephone inquiries (never re- 
ceiving a reply) after that to check on the 
progress of the repair. Finally after amass- 
ing a rather large telephone bill, about VA 
weeks ago I was told, rather unwillingly, 
that my expansion board had not been 
touched. I was also told that many of 
LNW's repair technicians had been on 
vacation and that repairs on units under 
warranty were backlogged. I was asked to 
call back in two to three weeks, or if I 
wanted my circuit board sent to Wilson 
Technical Services. Mr. Wilson, I was told, 
had formerly been employed by LNW Re- 
search and was doing part of LNW's war- 
ranty repair work. I elected to leave the 
circuit board with LNW. 

After a two-week wait. 1 tried contacting 
LNW by telephone again but received no 
answer. I then called Wilson Technical Ser- 
vices and was told that LNW had gone out 
of business! All of LNW's warranty work, 
1 was told, had been turned over to Wilson 
Technical Services. My expansion board, 
however, was not on the list of units turned 
over to them. Wilson Technical Services 



said that it would check further. 1 tele- 
phoned Wilson Technical Services again, 
and the woman to whom I spoke before 
confirmed that my expansion board was 
not on the list of units turned over to 
Wilson Technical Services. 

No person seems to know the present 
location of my essential and relatively ex- 
pensive circuit board. 1, therefore, have 
found it necessary to contact the Attorney 
General's office of the State of California 
to begin proceedings against Wilson Tech- 
nical Services and LNW Research (if it can 
be located). This is in addition to contact- 
ing all magazines and users groups that 
I can think of. 1 am also contacting the Bet- 
ter Business Bureau and the Chamber of 
Commerce of Tustin, California. 

I am not the only LNW 80 computer 
owner involved in this aggravating situa- 
tion. Wilson Technical Services informed 
me that I am only one of several in the 
same predicament. So here 1 sit, out of 
business, awaiting the outcome of due 
process. 

Jeffrey W. Cox 
New Albany, IN 



BITE 



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APRIL 1985 -BYTE 439 



WHAT'S NEW 



PERIPHERALS 



Data-Compression Unit 



The Accelerator Series 
3 1 asynchronous data- 
compression unit from 
Telebyte can be installed in 
existing networks. The Ac- 
celerator provides 3 -to- 1 
data acceleration and sup- 
ports synchronous and asyn- 
chronous modems. It can 
handle terminal data rates 
up to 9600 bits per second 
and modem data rates up 
to 2400 bps. 

During operation, encoded 
bit strings are transmitted 
between Accelerator units 
using a modified X.2 5 pro- 
tocol. This method limits 
data errors and increases 
data security. Also, you can 
improve security by assign- 
ing a four-digit Network 
Security Code to each Ac- 
celerator in the network. 

The Accelerator's front 



Mac Hard-Disk Drives 




Ike Accelerator data-compression unit. 



panel includes touch-sensi- 
tive keys, status lamps, and 
display digits so you can 
program permanent options 
from the front panel. The 
unit contains no internal DIP 
switches or jumpers. 

Prices for the Accelerator 
Series 31 products range 
from $695 for a unit with a 
data-compression ratio of 2 



to 1 and a modem data rate 
of 1200 bps to $1095 for 
the maximum configuration 
with a data-compression 
ratio of 3 to I and a 
modem data rate of 2400 
bps. For more details, con- 
tact Telebyte Corp.. 215 Oak 
St.. Natick, MA 01760, (617) 
653-3995. 
Inquiry 615. 



Davong supplies multi- 
ple-volume hard- 
disk drives for the Macin- 
tosh with four amounts of 
storage: 10, 21, 32. and 43 
megabytes. Mac Disks are 
partitioned into two volumes 



and initialized when 
shipped. Each disk-drive 
system features Davong's 
Volume Manager software 
Average Mac Disk access 
time is 100 milliseconds 
with the 10- and 21 -mega- 




Da wwg's Mac Disk hard-disk drive. 



byte systems and 40 milli- 
seconds with the 32- and 
43-megabyte models. Mac 
Disk connects to either 
RS-422 port on the Macin- 
tosh. 

The Volume Manager pro- 
gram lets you add, delete, 
and activate volumes. It also 
can gather free space on 
Mac Disk so you can com- 
press space to create an ad- 
ditional volume This release 
of the software lets you con- 
nect Mac Disk to the Macin- 
tosh's modem or printer 
port for use in telecommuni- 
cations. 

Prices for the Mac Disk 
line depend on amount of 
storage: $1950 for 10 mega- 
bytes, $2795 for 21 mega- 
bytes, $3395 for 32 mega- 
bytes, and $3995 for 43 
megabytes. For complete 
details, contact Davong 
Systems Inc., 217 Humboldt 
Court, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. 
(408) 734-4900. 
Inquiry 617. 



Hard-Disk System 
for the AT 

Internal hard-disk drives 
specially designed for the 
IBM PC AT are available in 
20-, 33-, and 117-megabyte 
models from PC's Limited. 
The disk-drive systems are 
compatible with DOS 3.0 
and 3.1. 

The full-height 5!4-inch 
hard-disk drives run off the 
IBM-installed PC AT con- 
troller. The units come com- 
plete with the necessary 
cables and mounting hard- 
ware, and they install easily, 
dropping directly into the 
existing PC AT box. 

Prices for the hard-disk 
drives are $795 for the 
20-megabyte model, $1195 
for 33 megabytes, and 
$3995 for 117 megabytes. 
For further information, 
contact PC's Ltd., 7801 
North Lamar #E-200. Austin, 
TX 78752, (512) 452- 
0323. 
Inquiry 616. 

PCjr Numeric 
Data-Entry Pad 

Key Tronic's numeric 
data-entry pad for the 
IBM PCjr includes all mathe- 
matic function keys. It also 
features cursor-control, Tab, 
Backspace, and Enter keys. 
The user can convert the 
numeric pad to the function 
mode without returning to 
the PCjr keyboard. The 
keypad facilitates efficient 
data entry for number- 
intensive applications such 
as spreadsheets and 
accounting systems. 

Suggested manufacturer's 
retail price for the IBM PCjr 
numeric keypad (model KB 
5149jr) is $99.95. For more 
information, contact Key 
TYonic Corp., POB 14687, 
Spokane. WA 99214, (800) 
262-6006; in Washington, 
(509) 928-8000. 
Inquiry 618. 



440 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



WHAT'S NEW 



PERI PHERAL S 



3 Server Network Server 



A dedicated multifunction 
network server is avail- 
able from 3Com. You can 
use 3Server with 3Com's 
Ethernet-based EtherSeries 
network products to com- 
bine personal computers 
and host systems in a local- 
area network (LAN). 3 Server 
also supports communica- 
tions over telephone lines 
for electronic mail and 
direct communication with 



IBM mainframes using SNA 
protocols. 

The 3Server can accom- 
modate up to 50 individuals 
in a network. It uses the 
Intel 80186 and the 82 586 
Ethernet controller with a 
36-megabyte (formatted 
capacity) fixed-disk drive. 

You can add a tape back- 
up unit of 60 megabytes to 
the 3Server. You can also 
use up to six external disk- 



drive modules to expand 
disk storage to more than 
2 50 megabytes per 3Server. 
Suggested retail price for 
the 3Server is $7495. Add- 
on 36-megabyte disk drives 
cost $3995 each, and the 
60-megabyte tape backup 
unit costs $2995. A $995 
384K-byte memory option 
for expansion of disk cache 
will bring total memory to 
896K bytes. 



EtherShare. a 3 Server soft- 
ware package that provides 
shared disk capabilities, 
costs $695. EtherPrint, a 
shared printing program, 
sells for $395, and Ether- 
Mail gives you electronic- 
mail capability for $995. 
Contact 3Com Corp., 1365 
Shorebird Way, POB 7390, 
Mountain View, CA 94039, 
(415) 961-9602. 
Inquiry 619. 



ADD - I NS 



Memory Upgrade for the Mac 



MicroGraphic Images 
has released the 
MegaMac, a memory 
upgrade for Apple's Macin- 
tosh, MegaMac hardware 
provides 1024K bytes of 
memory, partitioned into 
two sections: 512K bytes of 
core memory and 512K 
bytes used as a RAM disk. 

Reportedly the MegaRAM 
software package sold with 
the upgrade board lets you 
load any file or application 
program from the RAM disk 
into the core memory three 
to six times faster than from 



a disk drive. 

The suggested retail price 
for the MegaMac upgrade 
board is $1395. (You must 
return the Macintosh's 
original 128K-byte mother- 
board to MicroGraphic Im- 
ages.) The price for a com- 
plete 1024K-byte system in- 
cluding the Macintosh com- 
puter is $3495. For further 
technical information, con- 
tact MicroGraphic Images 
Corporation, 19612 Kings- 
bury Street, Chatsworth, CA 
91311. (818) 368-3482. 
Inquiry 620. 



IBM PC UNIX Coprocessor 



The Opus516 Personal 
Mainframe is a UNIX 
coprocessor subsystem that 
converts an IBM PC or plug- 
compatible to a 32-bit UNIX 
workstation. Opus516 con- 
sists of a complete port of 
AT&T UNIX System V 
(release 2.0) and a 32-bit 
coprocessor. 

The UNIX coprocessor is 
based on National Semicon- 
ductor's 32016 processor 
and includes the 32082 
memory-management unit 
and 32081 floating-point 
unit. On-board memory is 



expandable to 2 megabytes. 
Included with UNIX System 
V and its utilities are C and 
FORTRAN-77 compilers, an 
assembler, and a debugger. 
Opus516 supports UNIX and 
PC-DOS. 

In OEM quantities, a 
1 -megabyte configuration is 
$3140 with a single-user ob- 
ject license. Multiuser licens- 
ing is available as an option. 
Contact Opus Systems, Suite 
120, 960 San Antonio RcL 
Los Altos, CA 94022, (415) 
941-7201. 
Inquiry 621. 



Multiuser Database Environment 



Sentinel Computer's SMX 
for the IBM PC, XT, or 
AT is a combination of a 
four-channel serial-interface 
board and a multiuser ex- 
ecutive software package. Its 
multiuser database-oriented 
operating environment ac- 
commodates up to five ter- 
minals and five printers. 

The interface board for 
SMX uses standard RS-232C 
serial ports. It supports port 
speeds ranging from 300 to 
9600 bps. 

The SMX-Executive soft- 
ware is menu-driven and has 
a help facility. It includes an 
integrated database mana- 



ger, interactive on-line oper- 
ations, multitasking, virtual 
memory, a print spooler, 
and multiple language/ 



character capability. 

SMX sells for $1495. For 
further details, contact 
Sentinel Computer Corpora- 



tion, 9902 Carver Rd., Cin- 
cinnati, OH 45242, (513) 
984-6622. 
Inquiry 622, 



RAM Card for the Chameleon 



An expansion board for 
the Chameleon and 
Chameleon Plus portable is 
available from Seequa Com- 
puter. The Chameleon RAM 
Plus Card comes with 128K, 
2 56K, or 384K bytes of 
RAM. The 384K-byte version 
gives you 640K bytes of 
total RAM, the maximum on 
the Chameleon or Chame- 



leon Plus. 

The Chameleon RAM Plus 
Card comes standard with a 
real-time clock and a print 
spooler. It lets you create a 
RAM disk as a third disk 
drive. The card requires 
DOS 2.0 and 2 56K bytes of 
RAM resident on the main 
logic board. 

Prices for the Chameleon 



RAM Plus Card are $395 for 
the 128K-byte version, $595 
for 2 56K bytes, and $795 
for 384K bytes. For com- 
plete product specifications, 
contact Seequa Computer 
Corp., 8305 Telegraph Rd., 
Odenton, MD 21113, (301) 
672-3600. 
Inquiry 623. 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 441 



WHAT'S NEW 



NEW SYSTEMS 



Sprite, a Multiuser System, Features the 80286 



Iarogate Limited's Sprite is 
a multiuser microcom- 
puter designed with Intel's 
6-MHz 80286 micropro- 
cessor and featuring Digital 
Research's Concurrent CP/M 
3.1 on its main processor 
and CP/M Plus on a slave. 
Ethernet capabilities are 
built in. Standard system 
hardware is made up of a 
514-inch 790K-byte floppy- 
disk drive, a 21 -megabyte 
hard disk, and a five-slot 
S-100 bus. 

Sprite, which comes with a 
keyboard and a high-resolu- 
tion green or amber monitor 
mounted on a tilt-and-swivel 
base, has its central pro- 
cessor, an interrupt con- 
troller, two serial and three 
parallel I/O bidirectional 
ports, and a socket for an 
optional 80287 mathematics 
coprocessor on its main 
printed-circuit board. Its 
serial ports have full hand- 
shaking and can operate at 
speeds of up to 38,400 bps. 
S-100 support logic and con- 
nectors for memory boards 
also reside on the main 
PCB. 




Wogate's Sprite has built-in Ethernet capabilities. 



Sixty-four dynamic RAM 
chips of either 64,000 or 
2 56,000 bits can be installed 
on the Sprite's memory 
boards, thereby offering 
RAM capacities ranging 
from 512K bytes to 2 mega- 
bytes. An 8027 memory- 
management unit polices 
operations while providing 
automatic refresh and full- 



speed memory access with- 
out wait states. The standard 
Sprite chassis can accom- 
modate 6 megabytes of 
RAM. 

The OWI. or outside world 
interface, board carries out 
high-speed disk I/O for the 
Sprite. The OWI board has a 
6-MHz Z80B, 2 56K bytes of 
RAM, a hard- and floppy- 



disk controller, DMA, and 
the Ethernet controller with 
support logic and battery- 
backed real-time clock. The 
disk controller gives you a 
SAS1 (Shugart Associates 
Standard Interface) connec- 
tion for your drives, and the 
RAM serves as an I/O buffer 
and cache memory 

The basic Sprite has two 
RS-232C serial ports for a 
pair of workers, and addi- 
tional ports will expand 
Sprite for as many as 18 
employees. Such options as 
IBM PC-compatible color 
graphics and an 8-port I/O 
board can be purchased. 
Many specialized S-100 
boards from third-party ven- 
dors reportedly work with 
Sprite. UNIX System V and 
Concurrent DOS IV are 
planned. 

Pricing for the Sprite was 
unavailable at press time. 
For further information, con- 
tact Iarogate Ltd., 197-213 
Lyham Rd., Brixton, London, 
SW2 5PY, England; tel: 
01-671 6321; Telex; 8950094 
JARO G. 
Inquiry 624. 



68000 Micros 
from England 



U -Microcomputers, War- 
rington, England, has 
launched a line of micro- 
computers built on the 
32716-bit 68000 micropro- 
cessor. The U-Man Series 
1000 is centered around a 
basic 128K-byte microcom- 
puter that features on-board 
RAM expansion to 1 mega- 
byte, dual 800K-byte floppy- 
disk drives, monochrome 
and RGB outputs, and a 
97-key keyboard. 

Graphics resolution is said 
to be 270 and 680 pixels, 
depending upon operating 
mode and configuration. Ex- 
ternal connections comprise 
a pair of serial ports, a Cen- 




Tfie Series 1000 can handle up to 1 megabyte of RAM. 



tronics parallel port, a 
general-purpose 16-bit 
outlet, and a 10-bit A/D jack 
for joysticks. The U-Man 



Series 1000 also has a 
speech synthesizer, sound 
generator, and a 6809 chip 
to supervise I/O operation. 



Two operating systems, 
CP/M-68K and UCSD p-Sys- 
tem, are offered. With 
CP/M-86K, the U-Man Series 
1000 will support Digital 
Research's CBASIC, Pascal 
MT+, C and 68000 
assembler packages as well 
as SVC FORTRAN and Cam- 
bridge LISP. Pascal, BASIC, 
FORTRAN, and 68000 assem- 
bler work with the p-System. 

A hard-disk option will be 
available. Pricing for the U- 
Man Series 1000 begins at 
£2499. Contact ^Microcom- 
puters Ltd., Winstanley In- 
dustrial Estate, Long Lane, 
Warrington, Cheshire WA2 
8PR, England; tel: (092 5) 
54117; Telex; 629279 
UMICRO G. 
Inquiry 625. 



442 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



WHAT'S NEW 



NEW SYSTEMS 



HP 260: Line of Small Business Computers 



Hewlett-Packard's HP 260 
family of multiuser, 
small-business computers is 
presently made up of three 
models, the 15, 24, and 55. 
The Model 260 family, 
whose introduction repre- 
sents the next step in the 
evolution of HP's Model 2 50 
microcomputer, is fully com- 
patible with hardware and 
software created for its 
primogenitor. It can handle 



HP plotters and the Thinkjet 
and LaserJet printers. The 
manufacturer says that the 
HP 260 is its first computer, 
other than its personal com- 
puters, to support these 
printers. 

All units measure 29 in- 
ches tall. 1 5 inches wide, 
and 28!^ inches deep. A 
14-inch monitor and a key- 
board are supported as a 
workstation alternative. 



The entry-level HP 260 
Model 15 has 2 56K bytes of 
RAM, a 1 5-megabyte hard- 
disk drive, and a 3!/2-inch 
microfloppy-disk drive. It 
lists for $10,500. 

With 512K bytes of RAM, 
a 24-megabyte hard disk, 
and streaming-tape backup, 
the Model 24 can be ex- 
panded to provide 190 
megabytes of disk storage. 
Pricing begins at $16,300. 



The top-of-the-line Model 
55 can be enhanced to sup- 
port as many as 18 users. It 
comes with the same 
amount of RAM as the 
Model 24, a streaming-tape 
backup, and 55 megabytes 
of hard-disk storage. The 
Mode! 55 begins at $20,500. 

For more information, con- 
tact your local Hewlett- 
Packard sales office. 
Inquiry 626. 



SOFTWARE • APPLE 



Mix Arabic, English, and Graphics on lie 



A multilingual word- 
processing system for 
the Apple lie has been 
created through the joint ef- 
forts of DIWAN Science and 
Information Technology and 
Attar Computers Limited. 
The system uses the lie's bit- 
mapped display to print 
Arabic and English text in 
either high resolution (40 
columns) or double high 
resolution (80 columns). 

Supplied utility programs 
let you mix high-resolution 
graphics with text. Graphics 
can also be manipulated 
and enhanced with Apple's 
Mousepaint program. Arabic 
and English texts can have 



independent windows, each 
of which supports indepen- 
dent scrolling. 



This word processor sup- 
ports two Arabic fonts as 
well as English, French, and 




im 



Windows. English, and Arabic displayed on the lie. 



German fonts. It's supplied 
with both Arabic fonts and 
the English font, a bilingual 
notepad program, an ad- 
dress program, and Image- 
writer bilingual driver rou- 
ines. The Arabic text sup- 
ports full vowel points and 
fully conforms with the 
ASMO 449 standard. 

The word processor is 
£295. Contact DIWAN 
Science and Information 
Technology London House, 
271 King St., London W6 
9LZ, England; tel: (01) 74! 
8011; Telex: 261507 
MONREF G (quote reference 
number 2785). 
Inquiry 627. 



Personal Income Planning Set 



A set of programs for the 
Apple He and He. Plan 
Ahead comprises applica- 
tions that help you plan 
your retirement income, life- 
insurance coverage, and 
college-fund savings. Pub- 
lished by Advanced Finan- 
cial Planning, Plan Ahead 
modules are designed to 
work alone or in conjunction 
with one another. 

Each module lets you ac- 
count for inflation and print 
out its various components, 
such as budget statements 



and year- by-year itemiza- 
tions. Financial data can be 
swapped between modules, 
all of which are menu-driven 
and fully documented. 

The Retirement Planning 
module helps you create a 
total retirement plan in light 
of your particular circum- 
stances, it details the infla- 
tion rate applicable to your 
budget, the funds that will 
be required at retirement, 
the amount of your retire- 
ment fund covered by your 
current assets, and other 



data. This program can 
analyze your plan, deter- 
mine if changes are neces- 
sary, and suggest where 
changes might be made. 
Life Insurance Planning 
aids in the determination of 
the amount of insurance 
needed to provide for your 
family in the event of your 
sudden death. It considers 
such expenses as daily liv- 
ing, college fees, and funeral 
charges and ciphers them 
with hoped-for income from 
Social Security, current 



assets, and the projected in- 
come of your spouse. 

College Funding calculates 
savings in two ways: lump- 
sum investment in the first 
year or yearly amounts to 
accumulate the necessary 
funds. 

Single modules are $29.95. 
Two together are $49.95, 
and the entire set is $59.95. 
Contact Advanced Financial 
Planning, 20922 Paseo 
Olma, El Tbro. CA 92630. 
Inquiry 628. 

[continued] 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 443 



WHAT'S NEW 



SOFTWARE • APPL 



Compiled Logo Runs on Mac 



A compiled version of the 
Logo language, Exper- 
Telligence's ExperLogo is 
available for Apple's Macin- 
tosh microcomputer. Exper- 
Logo uses the Mac's user- 
interface conventions and 
has been enhanced with 
such features as array pro- 
cessing and data-file han- 
dling. The publisher says 
that it is the only compiled 
version of Logo available 
and that it is the first Logo 



to process items and lists 
using arrays. 

ExperLogo's turtle graphics 
reportedly operate at 
speeds up to 100 times 
faster than that of other 
Logos. Its Bunny Graphics 
feature gives you bunnies 
that move about the screen 
in three-dimensional space. 
The bunnies respond to 
such navigation commands 
as yaw, roll, and pitch, and 
they can reside in cubes 



and spheres. 

Its data-file handling abili- 
ties lets ExperLogo pro- 
grams create and read their 
own files. Programs can be 
accessed from other applica- 
tions through the Mac's 
standard text and graphic in- 
terfaces. A few of the list- 
processing features are said 
to be adapted from LISP. 

ExperLogo programs are 
not limited to 128K bytes of 
RAM because of a feature 



known as load-on-call. This 
means that procedures are 
stored on disk and auto- 
matically loaded when 
called if they are not 
already present in memory. 
The suggested retail price 
is $149.95. A French version 
of ExperLogo is available. 
Contact ExperTelligence Inc., 
5 59 San Ysidro Rd., Santa 
Barbara, CA 93108, (805) 
969-7874. 
Inquiry 629. 



Full Database Lets You Customize Applications 



Helix, a data-based 
information-manage- 
ment and decision-support 
system, gives your Apple 
Macintosh full database 
capabilities and allows you 
to customize applications 
development. This program 
performs traditional data- 
base-management tasks, 
such as filing, sorting, and 
data retrieval, yet it can be 
used for complex data 
analyses and task modeling. 
Helix lets you devise your 
own task-specific applica- 
tions. Data needs only to be 
entered once for use with a 
variety of jobs, and data- 
base structures are easily 
modifiable. Helix works with 
both text and numbers. 



The Helix user interface 
employs icons for each of 
its functional operations. You 
can link the icons together 
in a flowchart with data 
from any related file. This 
gives you a quick way of 
setting up relationships and 
calculations that you can 



tailor to specific applica- 
tions. All the Mac's user- 
interface conventions, in- 
cluding the mouse, windows, 
and pull-down menus, are 
used by Helix, 

Helix runs on 512K-byte 
Macintoshes and Lisas 
equipped with an external 



disk drive or a hard disk. 
With a demonstration disk 
and tape sample applica- 
tions, and manual. Helix is 
$395. Contact Odesta Corp.. 
3186 Doolittle Dr., North- 
brook. IL 60062. (312) 
498-5615. 
Inquiry 630. 



MacChoice Helps Make Decisions 



MacChoice from 
Superex Business Soft- 
ware lets you use the Macin- 
tosh for making compari- 
sons. MacChoice lets you 
compare and rate two, three 
or four items simultaneously 
using as many as 20 cate- 
gories. Categories are listed 



in order of importance, and 
each item is rated by its 
categories. This program 
tabulates each individual 
item's ratings and displays 
the results in a bar graph. 
The chart provides a visual 
representation of each item's 
ratings, which simplifies your 



decision-making process. 

MacChoice costs $49,95. 
For more information, con- 
tact Superex Business Soft- 
ware, 151 Ludlow St., 
Yonkers, NY 10705, (800} 
862-8800; in New York. (914) 
964-5200. 
Inquiry 631. 



SOFTWARE 



I B M P C 



Database Manager for Applications Development 



A database-management 
system designed for ap- 
plications development, 
Progress is intended to 
replace traditional languages 
and the development 
methods built around them. 
The system consists of five 
key components: a data dic- 
tionary, an application lan- 
guage, a screen and report 
formatter, a procedure 
editor, and a relational 



database manager. 

The Progress language has 
a library of operators and 
functions, including square 
root, logarithm, concatena- 
tion, and string-matching 
operations. The syntax- 
checking editor positions 
the cursor on the incorrect 
word or phrase, and a help 
facility provides error ex- 
planations and access to 
definitions in the data 



dictionary. 

The relational database 
manager supports databases 
of more than 5 billion bytes, 
and up to 1000 files and in- 
dexes can exist in each 
database. Each record can 
contain an unlimited number 
of fields within a maximum 
record size of 2000 bytes. 
Because all fields occupy 
only the number of bytes 
needed to hold the data. 



the vendor said, storage re- 
quirements on disk are 
generally reduced 30 to 60 
percent. 

Progress for the IBM PC 
costs $695; versions for 
UNIX machines range from 
$24 50 to $4450. For more 
information, contact Data 
Language Corp., 5 Andover 
Rd„ Billerica, MA 01821, 
(617) 663-5000. 
Inquiry 632. 



444 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



WHAT'S NEW 



OFTWARE • IBM PC 



Have a Talk with Your Computer 



Large Print for the Visually Impaired 



Racter is a program that 
engages in conversation 
ranging from serious discus- 
sion to small talk. The pro- 
gram also tells jokes and 
stories and can recall and 
refer to conversations it has 
had. (Racter is reportedly 
the first program to author a 
book. The Policeman's Beard Is 
Half Constructed, published by 
Warner Books last year, is a 
collection of stories, poems, 
essays, and limericks created 
by Racter.) 

According to the devel- 
opers, Racter never repeats 
itself because, unlike pro- 
grams like Eliza, it contains 
no stock responses and has 



its own "eccentric personali- 
ty" The vendor touts the 
program as a mix of educa- 
tional and entertainment 
software and notes that 
Racter is being used as a 
tool to sharpen the inter- 
viewing skills of psychiatric 
interns. No technical knowl- 
edge is needed to use the 
program. 

For the IBM PC and com- 
patibles, Racter is $69.95. 
Apple and Commodore ver- 
sions are in the works. Con- 
tact John D. Owens Associ- 
ates Inc., 12 Schubert St., 
Staten Island. NY 10305- 
2999, (718) 448-6283. 
Inquiry 633. 



Computer DiskCourse has 
developed several pro- 
grams for people with poor 
vision. Lyon Large Print is a 
screen-review package that 
provides nine print sizes, 
three space settings, and, on 
color machines, 16 fore- 
ground and background 
colors for applications soft- 
ware running on the IBM PC 
and compatibles. You can 
generate large-print hard 
copy with an IBM dot-matrix 
printer. Lyon Large Print is 
designed to work with other 
packages for the visually im- 
paired, including the PC 
Talking Program. The soft- 
ware costs $490 and in- 



cludes a text editor; a demo 
disk costs $20. 

WordLyon is a specially 
configured large-print ver- 
sion of WordStar. Letters 
range in height from 2 to 
4/2 inches. The program 
costs $150. 

Large Lot us, an interactive 
large-print driver for Lotus 
1-2-3, costs $200. 

The company will cus- 
tomize other software to 
work in large-print format. 
Contact Computer Disk- 
Course, 4546 John St.. Van- 
couver, British Columbia 
V5V 3X2. Canada. (604) 
876-1287. 
Inquiry 634. 



SOI TWARE • CP/M/MS-D OS 



Three for Digital Research Products 



CBC Tools is a function 
library for use with 
Digital Research's CBAS1C 
compiler. It has more than 
100 functions to perform 
string manipulation, sorting, 
radix conversion, bit and 
byte manipulation, and inter- 
facing with the operating 
system. Most of the program 
was written in assembly lan- 
guage; you can develop 
libraries of your own in 
compiled CBASIC. CBC Tools 
is available for CP/M-80 and 
CP/M-86 at a price of $100 
(plus $5 for shipping). 

CBCXREF is a cross-refer- 
ence utility for the CBASIC 
compiler. Its user options let 
you set page length and 
width and sort output. The 
utility can find unreferenced 
variables and labels and 
identify unused variables 
and labels. CBCXREF is 
available for CP/M-80 and 
CP/M-86 at a price of $80 
(plus $3 shipping). 

MBPASL1B is a replace- 
ment library for PASLIB 
(used with Pascal MT+). Ac- 
cording to the vendor, pro- 



grams using MBPASLIB are 
typically 4K to 5K bytes 
smaller and up to 100 per- 
cent faster than those using 



PASLIB. The library is avail- 
able for CP/M-80 and costs 
$75 (plus $3 shipping). Con- 
tact Minnow Bear Com- 



puters, POB 2233, Station A, 
Champaign, 1L 61820-8233, 
(217) 398-6883. 
Inquiry 635. 



Artificial Intelligence at Home 



Dynamic Master Systems 
has developed an AI 
programming system for 
CP/M and MS-DOS environ- 
ments that gives home com- 
puter users the tools to 
create their own expert 
systems. TOPSI is a native- 
code version of OPS- 5, a 
high-order language for 



development of expert pro- 
grams. To make TOPS! effi- 
cient on its microprocessor 
hosts, DMS has added 
several enhancements to the 
OPS-5 language definition 
and placed a few restrictions 
on the sizes of data 
structures. 
TOPSI, which costs $75 



(plus $5 shipping), is avail- 
able for most Z80 CP/M 
systems with 65K-byte 
memory and most IBM 
PC-compatibles with at least 
128K bytes. Contact 
Dynamic Master Systems 
Inc., POB 566456, Atlanta, 
GA 30356, (404) 565-0771. 
Inquiry 636. 



Business-Applications Language 



A high-level language for 
business applications, 
Lucid is reportedly easier to 
learn and use than conven- 
tional programming lan- 
guages because it has 
special business features 
and a database system built 
in. Functions include data 
conversion, string manipula- 
tion, form input, screen 



handling, report generation, 
and math operations. Pro- 
grammers can define their 
own functions, and the 
language supports all C 
statements except GOTO. 

Lucid can read dBASE files 
directly. It can access data 
from Framework. Symphony, 
Lotus 1-2-3, and all 
spreadsheets. 



A version for the IBM PC 
and compatibles sells for 
$295. UNIX and XENIX ver- 
sions are available under 
OEM and licensing agree- 
ments. Contact Lucid Soft- 
ware Corp.. 3080 Valmont 
Rd., Boulder, CO 80301. 
(303) 442-4981. 
Inquiry 637. 

{continued) 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 445 



WHAT'S NEW 



SOFTWARE • CP/M/MS-DO 



Database Management System 



Datamaster is an infor- 
mation system de- 
signed to provide on-line in- 
formation retrieval and up- 
date of single or multiple 
database sources. Through 
its modules and sub- 
modules, you can make or 
modify a record structure or 
a data-screen entry and 
generate reports to your 
specifications. 

The program allows mixed 
fields on the same screen 
from a single or multiple 
database You can retrieve 
relative information from 
one or several databases 



and update one or more 
databases from the same 
screen. You can also link 
screens from one to an- 
other; the vendor claims 
there is no limit to the num- 
ber of screens you can link. 

Datamaster operates on 
most computers running 
under CP/M. MP/M. MS-DOS, 
TurboDOS, ITT-DOS, and 
Oasis. Suggested retail price 
is $495. Contact CD.A. Inter- 
national Software Corp., 
Suite 330, 14900 Ventura 
Blvd.. Sherman Oaks. CA 
91403, (818) 986-3233. 
Inquiry 638. 



Half-Duplex Communications 



Intended primarily for use 
with the existing radio 
telephone network, HCOM is 
a half-duplex communica- 
tions package for PC-DOS, 
MS-DOS, and CP/M-80 sys- 
tems. The program provides 
all the logic necessary to 
support CRC 16 error check- 
ing, half-duplex link control, 
and user-configurable help 
screens and menus. Remote- 
site or mobile users can log 
on to any HCOM system 
and send or receive files, 

HCOM can also be used 
in full-duplex mode and still 
support all the services pro- 



vided in half-duplex mode. 
Additionally, it can be used 
as a terminal emulator to 
access bulletin-board sys- 
tems or other non-HCOM 
systems. XON/XOFF protocol 
is supported. On dedicated 
links, HCOM operates at up 
to 9600 bps. 

The software costs $42 5 
(Canadian). The AT&T 202- 
compatible modem, the 
CD-2, sells for $62 5. Contact 
Crafield Digital, 107 Abadan 
Crescent NE, Calgary Al- 
berta T2A 6P1, Canada. 
(403) 273-9738. 
Inquiry 639. 



SOFTWARE 



OTHER COMPUTER 



Screen Dump from 
MBC 550 

Snapshot allows Sanyo 
MBC 5 50 screen dumps 
at any time. It also lets you 
zoom in on smaller areas of 
the screen. It has three 
operating modes: character, 
color graphics, and high- 
resolution black-and-white 
graphics. The character 
mode can be used for fast 
printing of screen data; the 
color-graphics mode prints a 
side view of the screen with 
colors shown as distinguish- 
able dot patterns. 

Snapshot works with any 
dot-matrix printer with 
graphic capabilities and a 
parallel port. Horizontal and 
vertical scaling, color-to-dot 
pattern representation, and 
the keystrokes used to in- 
voke its operations can be 
modified. Snapshot is pre- 
configured for various 
printers. It runs on versions 
of MS-DOS that occupy 
under 2.5K bytes of main 
memory. It costs $34.95, 
plus $1 shipping. Contact 
Key Software Products, 440 
Ninth Ave., Menlo Park. CA 
94025, (415) 364-9847. 
Inquiry 640. 



Structured Programming Language Released for Commodore 



A high-level, structured 
programming language 
similar to C and Pascal. PRO- 
MAL runs on the Com- 
modore 64. Systems Man- 
agement Associates says that 
PROMALs fast compiler and 
a highly efficient run-time en- 



vironment let you write ap- 
plications for the Com- 
modore 64 in a high-level 
language, where once such 
programs had to be written 
in assembly language. 

PROMAL (Programmer's 
Micro Applications Lan- 




PROMAL for the C-64 is similar to C and Pascal. 



guage) comes with a one- 
pass compiler, a full-screen 
editor, a command ex- 
ecutive, and a library of 
predefined utilities. The 
PROMAL executive provides 
file, memory, and program 
management as well as I/O 
redirection. A full-screen, 
cursor-driven editor helps 
you enter and edit your 
source program rapidly. 

The library of machine- 
language subroutines sup- 
ports the PROMAL run-time 
environment with optimized 
routines for file I/O, string 
handling, formatted output, 
and data conversion. Bench- 
marks that reportedly show 
PROMAL to be from 70 to 
200 percent faster than 
BASIC, COMAL, FORTH, and 
Pascal are available from the 
manufacturer. 

PROMAL is $49.95 factory- 
direct. A developer's version 
with an umlimited run-time 
distribution license is $99,95. 
Contact Systems Manage- 
ment Associates, 3700 Com- 
puter Dr., POB 2002 5, 
Raleigh, NC 27619, (919) 
787-7703. 
Inquiry 641. 



446 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



WHAT'S NEW 



SOFTWARE • OTHER COMPUTERS 



Communications Software for Portable 



Geneva Connection is a 
ROM-cartridge telecom- 
munications program that 
lets users of Epson's Geneva 
portable computer commu- 
nicate directly with external 
storage units or by modem 
with other computers. It can 
handle communications with 
remote computers by means 
of add-on or external 
modems and through 
acoustic couplers. Data can 
also be sent or retrieved 
from a floppy disk, RAM 
disk, or microcassette 

Geneva Connection offers 
two means of transferring 
files: XON/XOFF flow control 
and a block protocol with 
error detection and correc- 
tion. It works with either 
pulse or tone dialing and is 
capable of automatic 
dialing. 

Other features are English- 
language command struc- 
tures, automatic-answer 




Geneva Connection is a communications package for the Epson portable. 



capability for preset time 
periods, full range of com- 
munication speeds, and 
selective filtering and re- 
placement of characters for 
such applications as file 
transfers between word 



processors. 

The retail price for the 
Geneva Connection is $79. 
Contact Epson America, 
2780 Lomita Blvd., Torrance, 
CA 90505. (213) 539-9140. 
Inquiry 642. 



CP/M Plus for Cromemcos 



Super Bios Plus is a 
revised version of CP/M 
Plus for Cromemco com- 
puters said to incorporate a 
memory-management 
method that uses interbank 
memory moves and banking 
of disk drivers to achieve a 
60K-byte program area. Its 
file system features hashed 
directory access, record buf- 
fering, and multisectored 
disk I/O. 

Super Bios Plus is upward- 
compatible with CP/M 2.2 
for applications program- 
ming, and it supports up to 
16 hard disks. 

Console I/O redirection 
utilities are available for ap- 
plications programming 
transparency. Extended 
system utilities include pro- 
grams that list file direc- 
tories and transfer files. A 
batch facility is provided. 

A CDOS emulator for run- 



ning Cromemco software 
under CP/M and MP/M, Ex- 
pand is a supplied system 
extension. Super BIOS Plus 
also incorporates a compo- 
nent that allows Cromemcos 
to read data disks created 
on the IBM PC. 

Super BIOS Plus with Ex- 
pand costs $375. It supports 
single- or double-sided, 



single- or double-density 
5 l A- and 8-inch disks. Source 
code and copy and disk- 
formatting programs are 
supplied. Contact Micro Ap- 
plications & Hardware, 15 
Princess St., Sausalito, CA 
94965, (415) 331-6422; east 
of the Rockies. (314) 
434-1896. 
Inquiry 643. 



WHERE DO NEW PRODUCT ITEMS COME FROM? 
The new products listed in this section of BYTE are chosen from the 
thousands of press releases, letters, and telephone calls we receive each 
month from manufacturers, distributors, designers, and readers. The 
basic criteria for selection for publication are: [a) does a product match 
our readers interests? and \b) is it new or is it simply a reintroduction 
of an old item? because of the volume of submissions we must sort 
through every month, the items we publish are based on vendors 
statements and are not individually verified. \f you want your product 
to be considered for publication [at no charge), send full information 
about it, including its price and an address and telephone number 
where a reader can get further information, to New Products Editor, 
BYTE, POB 372. Hancock NH 03449. 



Utilities for LaserJet 

IetSet. a pair of utilities 
for Hewlett-Packard's 
LaserJet printer, runs on the 
HP 1 50 touch-screen com- 
puter, the IBM PC, and 
PC-compatibles. Both utili- 
ties interface transparently 
with each other and can be 
used with any text editor or 
word processor. 

SetLaser, the first utility, 
executes a string of com- 
mands that initialize the 
LaserJet and direct its out- 
put to the communications 
port. It provides access to 
the LaserJet's formatting 
capabilities, including 
typefaces, lines per inch, 
number of copies, and page 
length. Multiple formats can 
be saved for use with dif- 
ferent documents. 

The second utility is 
Runoff. It lets you set tab 
stops, margins, and page 
feeds from within the docu- 
ment being printed. It can 
be used for generating 
headers, footers, and page 
numbers and underlining 
portions of text. 

JetSet is $79. Contact 
Datamate Co., Suite 128, 
4135 South 100 East Ave., 
Tulsa. OK 74146, (800) 
262-7276; in Oklahoma, 
(918) 664-7276. 
Inquiry 644. 



MSX Source Code 
Manual 

Qest Publishing has 
released a complete 
BIOS manual for the MSX 
standard. 

MSX BIOS: The Complete 
MSX BASIC I/O Listing con- 
tains the full source code 
for MSX BASIC. This soft- 
cover book retails for 
$69.95. Contact Qest Pub- 
lishing Inc., Suite 800. 39 
West 32nd St.. New York, 
NY 10001, (212) 564-0749. 
Inquiry 645. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 447 



Inquiry 410 

jp^ ^^HBB JH QlfftTP K H The latest CCT implementation of the new 

M ■■ ™ ■ #1 \|N I F I VI generation Intel 16-Bit Processor technology. 

I ■ I ^mM_m ** _ h% ■■ A This means extreme speed, unequaled power, 

B^p ■■ I BbBi m C D I C C and the ultimate in reliability, and of course, the 

^0 ^m H ■ WLfllLv innovators at CCT behind it. 

This series in the CCT line exploits the speed and power of the Intel 80286 and Zilog Z-80H (8MHz), on the 286Z CPU 
board. This combination, along with CompuPro DMA controllers and I/O boards, yields a dramatic improvement in system 
throughput speeds, from basic CP/M operation, up to large powerful multi-user/multi-tasking machines. The CCT-4 
represents the most advanced hardware presently available in a microcomputer to run the thousands of CP/M type 
software programs on the market, and with CONCURRENT DOS 8-16 and the CompuPro PC Graphics board (when 
available), all software written for the IBM PC machines. This series is for the serious business/scientific user. 

CCT-4A State-of-the-art power in it's basic form. Consists of CCT-286Z CPU board and CCT-M256 (256K), along with Com- 
puPro: Enclosure 2 Desk (21 slot MF), Disk 1A, System Support 1, Interfacer 4, the CCT-2.4 floppy drive system, and 
CP/M 80 and CP/M 86, and with SF-200 surge suppressor system $5,995.00 

CCT-4B Single-user/hard disk power As the 4A, except priced without the CCT-2.4, to add in your choice of CCT hard/floppy 

combination drive subsystem, at the published pricing $4,895.00 

(Example: CCT-4B Mainframe with CCT-10/1 = $7,244.00) p,us cost of selected drive subsystem 

CCT-4C Multi-user/hard disk power. As the 4B, with the CCT-M512 (512K static RAM board) instead of M256; Interfacer 3 in- 
stead of Interfacer 4; SF-400 instead of SF-200, plus Concur, DOS 8-16 O.S. (6 user system) $6,695.00 

*t^V (Example: CCT-4C Mainframe with CCT-40/ 1 = $10,044.00) p,us cost of selec ^ drive subsystem 

%\^ C\V^ Limited Time Offer - FREE Supercalc 86 with any CCT-4 

^* w* The above systems include all necessary cabling, assembly, testing, minimum 20 hour burn-in, 

and the CCT unconditional 12 month direct warranty. 
CCT-M512 CCT introduces it's 512K static RAM board. IEEE Standard 12MHz. 512K in one slot! Introductory Price: $1 ,995 
CCT-M256 256K version of M512 upgradeable to full 512K. Perfect 256K RAM board for any CompuPro system .... $1,029 

CUSTOM COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY / BOX 4160 / SED0NA, ARIZONA 86340 

TOLL FREE ORDERING: 800-222-8686 / For technical support / service: 602-282-6299 



SW40W 



HIGH REL 



SW70W 



SWITCHING POWER SUPPLIES 



LOW COST 



SW80W 



SW138 



SW150 





R1 & R 1A 




ITEM 



FOR 



h5V -5V + 12V +12V -12V + 24V + 8V ±16V W x D x H in. TERMINALS 



PRICE 



SW40W TERM. & 2 ALPS DRIVES 2.5A 2/2.5A pk. 

SW70W APPLE !ll\ IBM PC-I, H H 7A 3A 2.5/3.5A pk. 

SW80W PC WITH SOFT DRIVES 8A 3A 3/4A pk. 

SW138 IBM PC-XT" P/S RPLCMNT. 15A 1.0A 4/5A pk. 

SW150 PC WITH HARD DRIVES 12A .3A 4/5A pk. 



2.5A 



.3A 

3A 
3A 
1.0A 
.5A 



6.3 x 3.9 x 1.9 
9.6 x 4 x 2.4 

7.4 x 4.5 x 2.3 

9.5 x 5.6x4.6 
10.4 x 5 x 2.5 



MOLEX5051 

MOLEX 126-P1 

MOLEX2139 

MOLEX, AMP. 

TERM, BLOCK 



$ 54.95 

64.95 

74.95 

129.95 

139.95 



SPECS. OF ABOVE SWITCHERS: 1 17/220 VAC SELECTABLE, INPUT 90- 132 VAC/ 180-275 VAC, EFFIC. 75% TYPICAL, LINE REGUL. 0.3%, LOAD 
REGUL. 1% ON f 5V, 5% ON OTHER VOLTAGES, 6.2 OVP SETTING ON +5V, OVERLOAD & SHORT CIRCUIT PROTECT LOW OUTPUT RIPPLE & 
NOISE, 1% MAX, 50,000 HRS. MTBF RELIABILITY. UL, FCC & VDE SAFETY & NOISE STANDARDS 

5 3 FOR S- 100, 10 SLOTS 5A 1A * - 5/7A pk. 12A 3A 10x6x5 

5 4 FOR S- 100, 6 SLOTS 4A 1A * - 4/5A pk. 8A 2.5A 8.4x5x4.8 
R 1 2 FLOPPY DRIVES 3A ,5A * - 3/4A pk 8x4x3.4 
R 1A APPLE II PC* 3A .5A 3/4A pk 5A 8x4x3.4 
C 64 COMPATIBLE TO COMMODORE C64 (OR C + 4) R POWER SUPPLY: +5V/1.7A, 9 VAC/1A & 117 VAC IN, POTTED & U/L 
*: +24V CAN BE CHANGED TO + 12V BY FACTORY PLEASE SPECIFY WHEN YOU ORDER. 

THE ABOVE 5 LINEAR P/S ARE WITH 3% LOAD REGUL, OVP ON ^5V, FUSED: INPUT & OUTPUTS. 

POWER TRANSFORMERS: (with mounting bracket) ON SALE 

ITEM PRIMARY SECOND. #1 SECOND #2 SECOND. #3 W x D x H in. PRICE 



SOLDER POST 
SOLDER POST 
SOLDER POST 
SOLDER POST 

C64 



$105.95 
89.95 
44.95 
46.95 
19.95 



T1 

T 4 - 

T 5 



110/120 VAC 
110/120 VAC 
110/120 VAC 
110/120 VAC 
110/120 VAC 
110/120 VAC 



2x8 VAC/7A 
2x8 VAC/12A 
2x8 VAC/6A 
16 VAC, CT, 4A 
16 VAC, CT, 4A 
16 VAC, CT, 3A 



28 VAC. CT. 2-5A 
28 VAC, CT, 3A 
28 VAC, CT. 2A 
28 VAC, CT, 1.5A 
28 VAC, CT, 1.5A 
28 VAC, CT, 2A 



28 VAC, CT, 3 A 
28 VAC, CT 3A 
48 VAC, CT, 2A 



SHIPPING: 

FOR EA. POWER SUPPLY: $6.00 IN CALIF; 
$8.00 IN OTHER STATES; $18.00 IN CANADA. 
FOR EA. TRANSFORMER: $6.00 IN ALL 
STATES; $12.00 IN CANADA. CALIF. 
RESIDENTS ADD 6.5% SALES TAX. 



IBM PC/PC-XT" APPLE ll/lll' & COMMODORE C64/C + 4* ARE TRADEMARKS OF IBM CORP 



3% x 3Vb x 3V 8 $15.95 

3%x4%x3V B 21.95 

33/4 x 4% x 3Ve 23.95 

33/4 x35/ 8 x3Vb 17.95 

33/4 x35/8x3Vb 14.95 

3x3x2V2 11.95 

APPLE COMPUTER INC & COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES. RESPECTIVELY 



MAILING ADDRESS: 
P.O. BOX 4296 
TORRANCE, C A 90510 



TELEX; 182558 



SUNNY INTERNATIONAL 

IN BUSINESS SINCE 1975 

(213) 328-2425 MON-FRI 8:30-5:30 



SHIPPING ADDRESS: 



22129V2 S. VERMONT AV 
TORRANCE, CA 90502 



448 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 370 



CCT 



CUSTOM COMPUTER 
TECHNOLOGY 



TOLL-FREE 

ORDERING: 

800-222-8686 

FOR TECHNICAL SUPPORT/ 1 CCT PLAZA — P.O. BOX 4160 — SEDONA, ARIZONA 86340 

SERVICE / IN ARIZONA: 
602-282-6299 



Purchase your Hardware and Software directly from an OEM / Systems Integrator. Take advantage of our buying power! We stock a 
full line of Board Level Components, Software and Peripherals. Call for your needs. We'll give you the Lowest Prices, and the Technical 
Support and Know-How we are quickly becoming well-known for. Satisfied Customers Nationwide. The Nation's Custom Systems House 
for Business, Education and Science. Call for a system quote. CCT implements tomorrow's technology today! 

FOREMOST QUALITY • ADVANCED SUPPORT • REASONABLE COST • 







CCT 



© 



CompuPro 



80286 NOW! 

□ CCT-286Z is our model designation 

for the MI-286 dual processor board 
from Macrotech. It features thesuper 
high speed combination of Z-80H and 
80286, with provision for the 80287 
math chip. Directly replaces 8085/88 
and 8086 CPUs running CP/M, MP/M 
Concurrent DOS, and MS-DOS, at 
throughput increases of 3X to 5X! 
SPECIAL PRICE $1099 
80287 Option - Installed - $395 



SEE THE CCT-4 SERIES 

USING THIS BOARD 

DETAILED ON THE FACING PAGE 



NEW-TRUE 

IBM PC INTERFACE 

ULTRA HI-RES GRAPHICS! 

CCT S-100/PC is a break-through for the 
Science/Business user. Mini-enclosure ac- 
cepts PC & compatable boards and direct- 
ly connects to your S-100 system, running 
PC-DOS or Concurrent DOS. Hercules 1 " 
Graphics System— Coming this May! 
!! THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!! 

LIBERTY TERMINALS 

• Superior Reliability • 

100-12" GREEN-25X 80 $399 

110-14" GREEN-80/132 Column ... $499 
200-14" GREEN-80/132 Super Deluxe . $569 
220-14" GREEN-DEC Compatible $699 
CCTRECOMMENDS- 

AMBER Screen Options $20 

OKIDATA PRINTERS - Top Quality 
82 -80 Col $329 83 -132 Col... $619 
92 - 80 Col $429 93 - 132 Col $659 
84 - 132 Col/200cps-Top of the Line $799 

For Serial Interfaces — Add $100 

DIABLO — Letter Quality Series 

Model 620 $969 Model 630 $1799 

WE HAVE ALL SOFTWARE-CALL 



INDUSTRIAL GRADE 
SUPERIOR QUALITY 



CCT DISK DRIVE SYSTEMS 

S-100 HARD DISK SUBSYSTEMS 



ROLLS ROYCES OF 
THE INDUSTRY 



Professionally engineered ST-506 type systems for the business market S-100 Computer user. In- 
cludes industry top quality drives, CompuPro Disk 3 DMA controller, all cabling, A&T. formatted. 
burned-in. Provisions for up to two hard disks in each system. We include operating system update. 
CP/M 80, CP/M 86, CP/M 8-16, MP/M 8-16, CP/M 68K. (/ 1 Systems are CCT innovated hard/floppy 
combinations, with Mitsubishi DSDD 8" drive.) 12 month warranty. 



CCT-10(11 + MEG) $1799 

CCT-20(22+ MEG) $2319 

CCT-40(36+ MEG) $2799 

CCT-60(58 + MEG) (New) $3999 

CCT-90(87 + MEG) (New) $5209 

CCT-125(123 + MEG) (New) $6399 



NEW 



CCT-10/1 $2349 

CCT-20/1 $2869 

CCT-40/1 $3349 

CCT-60/1 $4549 

CCT-90/1 $5759 

CCT-125/1 $6949 

10 MEG REMOVABLE CARTRIDGE DRIVE SYSTEM 
for hard disk back-up — DMA using Disk 3 controller. 
Super fast/Ultra reliable — Available April 



CCT-2.4 • Dual 8" DSDD FL0PPY SYSTEMS cCT-5 • S'A" DSDD 

Mitusbishi 2.4 Megabyte in Extra Heavy horizontal enclosure, IBM Compatible Tandon 320K. Extra Heavy Cabinet 
removeable filter air system, all cabling, A&T, Burned in. The accommodates two drives, hard or floppy. All cabling, A&T, 

fastest system available: $1229 Burned-in. Perfect for our PC-DOS Package $399 

CCT-8/5 • FULL IBM COMPATABILITY 

One Mitsubishi 8" DSDD (1 .2 Meg)/One 5-V4 " DSDD (360K) IBM Drive 

Both 3ms step rate — For Concurrent DOS and PC DOS . . . . $1029 

* SUPER PRICES * COMPUPRO COMPONENTS • IN STUCK • 

CPU-Z-$229 • Disk 1A - $519 • Disk 1Aw/CP/M- $619 • CPU 8086/87 - $819 • SPU-Z-? 

CPU 8085/88 $349 • CPU 8086 - $559/10Mhz - $599 • CPU 68K - $519/10Mhz - S639 

PC Graphics -$399 • Disk 3 -$499 • RAM 22 (256K) - $1179 • RAM 23/64K- $309/1 28K-S599 

NEW - M-Drive/H - 512K - $599 / 1 Meg - $1149 / 2 Meg - $2099 / 4 Meg - $3799 

Enclosure 2 Desk - $649/Rack - $699 * Interfacer 3 - $499 • Interfacer 4 - $349 • System Support 1 - S329 

Concurrent DOS 8-16 (CCTCMX)- $309 • CP/M 80 (CCTHMX) - $125 • CP/M86(CCTTMX) $175 

CP/M 8-16 (CCTTMX) - $199 • CP/M 68K (CCTCX) - $279 • Operating System Updates/Remakes - $30 



16 Bit Upgrade Kit: CP/M 86. RAM 23, System Support 1, Cable $759 CP/M 8-16 - Kit - $783 



CCT-1 - ENTRY LEVEL S-100 BUSINESS SYSTEM 

• Enclosure 2-Desk-21 Slot Mainframe • • CCT-2,4-Dual 8" Mitsubishi 
• CPU 8085/88 - 6Mhz 8085/8Mhz 8088 • DSDD Drive System -2.4 Megabytes • 

• Disk 1A - DMA Floppy Disk Controller • • CP/M 80 - 2.2 HMX - CCT Modified • 

• RAM 23 - 64K Static RAM - 12Mhz • • A) | cabling, Complete CCT Assembly, 

• Interfacer 4 - 3 Serial/2 Parallel I/O • Testing, and Minimum 20 Hour Burn-in • 

RUNS ALL STANDARD 8" CP/M SOFTWARE - INCLUDES OUR EXCLUSIVE 12 MONTH DIRECT WARRANTY 



SPECIAL PRICE 

$3,559 



Prices & availability subject to change. All products new, and carry full manufacturer's warranties. Call for catalog. Free technical help to anyone. All products we well are CCT individually tested 
and set up for your system - Plug-In & Go! Arizona residents add sales tax CCF Trademark - Custom Computer Technology: MS-DOS" Trademark - Microsoft; IBM" Trademark - 
International Business Machines; CompuPro" Trademark - W.J. Godbout; CP/M B MP/M " Trademarks - Digital Research; HERCULES ,M Trademark - Hercules Computer Technology 



Inquiry 409 



APRIL I985 -BYTE 449 



Inquiry 114 



Apple 



HARD_X>ISK T 



IBM, Zenith 



5 and 10 megabyte Removables 10, 31, 55, 88, and 119 megabyte Fixed 



Selected as the best buy for Apple and IBM PCs by 
Popular Computing Magazine, Digital Electronics 
Systems otters the most flexible HARD_DISKs for 
Apple and IBM PCs. A mixture of Re.novable and Fixed 
HARD DISKs allows virtually unlimited storage 



•User-selected volume sizes as follows 

DOS to 400K. PRODOS to 32 Mbytes 

CPM to 150 megabytes 

PASCAL to 16 megabytes. 
•Up to 254 DOS volumes, 63 CPM volumes, 64 

PASCAL volumes, and 63 PRODOS volumes per 

drive. 

•Split/merge files between HARD DISK and floppies. 
•Boot into any operating system and between 

operating systems. 
•Up to 12 drives per Apple. 



capacity Backed by direct and immediate engineering 
support, each customer can now enjoy carefree usage 
of high performance mass storage devices. Software 
developed by DES was designed to allow easy quick 
installation and to work transparently without chang 



•User-selectable format interleave for maximizing 

performance. 

•HARD_DISK can be used in any slot (except 0). 
•2 drive controller handles any combination of 

Removable and/or Fixed Drives. 
•Complete information on directly accessing the 

HARD DISK including direct access using your own 

drivers. 
•Transparent operation using each operating 

system's present commands. 
•Comprehensive manual 



Removable 



ing any existing software. Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-3, 
dBase II, immediately take advantage of vast disk 
space without modification. Call a DES customer 
engineer today to discuss your HARD DISK needs. 



IBM, Zenith 

•internal 5, 10 and 30 mb half height drives 
•External 5. 10, 30, 52, 82, and 112 mb drives 
•2 controllers C1 and C8 
•User configurable volumes 
•Completely IBM compatible 
•Transparent flagging of bad tracks 
•Works transparently with user software 
•11 Bit error detection and correction 
•Backup with copy utilities or optional tape drive 
available from DES 
•Full support and maintenance available from DES 





5mb 10mb 


10mb 30mb 52mb 


82mb 


112mb 


Apple, external 
Zenith 100 external 
2nd Drive 


1295 1995 
1450 2295 
895 1495 


795 1695 2995 
1395 1850 3250 
495 1195 2795 


3995 
4250 
3795 


4995 
5250 
4795 




5m b 10mb 


lOrnb 31 mb 55mb 


88mb 


119mb 


IBM PC, XT, AT - Internal 
IBM PC, XT, AT - External 
Zenith 150 
2nd Drive 


1095 1795 
1295 1995 
1295 1995 
895 1495 


795 1495 
895 1695 2995 
995 1695 2995 
495 1195 2795 


3995 
3995 
3795 


4995 
4995 
4795 


Annual Maintenance Contract 


150 190 


140 190 300 


400 


475 


CASH PRICE 


S, Inquire about CREDIT CARD and PURCHASE ORDER PRICES 







615-M9-5137 



DIGITAL ELECTRONICS SYSTEMS 

302 South Main, Estill Springs, Tennessee 37330 
Serving the Electronics Industry since 1978. 



WE ACCEPT: 

Mastercard, Visa, 

and American 

Express 




IBM PC, 256 K, One Half Height 320 K Disk Drive DS/DD. 
Persyst Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2.1 
PLUS a 10MB Hard Disk Sub System all for 

$2690.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD, Persyst 
Color Card. Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2.1, 130 Watt 
Power Suply PLUS a 10MB Hard Disk Sub System all for 

$2980.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD, Persyst 
Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor. DOS 2.1. 130 Watt 
Power Supply. 10MB Hard Disk Sub System, PLUS 
10MB Tape Back Up System all for: 

$3579.00 

IBM PC, 2S6 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD. Persyst 
Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2.1, 130 Watt 
Power Supply, 20MB Hard Disk Sub System all for: 

$3380.00 

IBM PC, 256 K, Two Half Height Drives DS/DD. Persyst 
Color Card, Taxan Green Monitor, DOS 2 1. 130 Watt 
Power Supply. 20MB Hard Disk Sub System PLUS 10MB 
Tape Back Up System all for: 

$3979.00 
(We configure and test the system for you at no extra 
cost.) 



SO ME BODY Has To Have The Lowest Prices! 



MONITORS 



IBM MONO PRINTER ADAPTER 
PERSYST COLOR ADAPTER 



AMDEK 300 _ 
PGSHX-12 — 
PGSMAX-12 _ 
PGSSR-12 



TAXAN GREEN COMPOSITE — 
TAXAN AMBER COMPOSITE _ 

TAXAN GREEN W/TTLPLUS 

TAXAN AMBER W/TTL PLUS __ 
IBM MONOCHROME DISPLAY. 
IBM COLOR DISPLAY 



.$135.00 
. $475,00 
. $190,00 
. $625,00 
.$125.00 
.$135.00 
. $149.00 
.$159.00 
. $260.00 
_ $590.00 



EPSON FX 80 

EPSON FX 100 

EPSON RX 80 

EPSON RX 80FT 

OKIDATA 82A 

OKIDATA 83A 

OKIDATA 92P 

OKIDATA 93P 

OKIDATA 84P 

OKIDATA 2410P 

TOSHIBA P1351 . 

NEC SPINWRITER 3550— 
NEC PINWRITER 80 COL _ 
NEC PINWRITER 136 COL . 

BROTHER HR-25 

BROTHER HR-35 



__ $425.00 

_ $625.00 

_ $245.00 

_ $295.00 

_ $299.00 

_ $569.00 

_ $399 00 

_ $625 00 

_ $759 00 

.$1959 00 

.$1295 00 

. $1595.00 

. $699.00 

. $899.00 

. $699.00 

. $925.00 



(Accessories on NEC & OKIDATA printers available) 



DRIVES 


TANDON TM-inn-P 


$179.00 


SLIMLINE- TOSHIBA 


$155.00 


SLIMLINE - TEAC 55B 


$155 00 




MULTIFUNCTION BOARDS 



AST 1/0+1 SER & 1 PAR 

AST SIX PACK 64K, 1 SER & 1 PAR . 
QUADBOARD 64K_ 



IBM COLOR GRAPHIC ADAPTER . 



_ $179.00 
. $269.00 
. $269.00 
. $225 00 



PERSYST MONO PRINTER ADAPTER^ 

HERCULES GRAPHIC ADAPTER 

HERCULES COLOR CARD 

STB GRAPHIX PLUS II 



MODEMS 



HAYES SMART MODEM 1200 _ 
HAYES SMART MODEM 300 _ 
HAYES 1200B PLUG IN CARD . 

QUBIE PC 212A/1200 INT 

QUBIE PC 212E/1200 EXT __ 



CONTROL DATA DISKETTES- 

KEYTRONIC KB5151 

PARALLEL CABLES 

64K RAM UPGRADE KIT_ 



128K RAM UPGRADE KIT (For AT) _ 
IBM PC POWER SUPPLY (Original) 
63.5 Watts. 
IBM KEYBOARD FOR PC (Original) 



. $230.00 
. $190.00 
- $21000 
. $349 00 
. $210.00 
. $375.00 



. $469.00 
. $209.00 
. $429.00 
. $275.00 
. $299.00 



HARD DISKS 


10MB SUB SYSTEM INT 


SAsn nn 


1flMp Slip SY.STPM FXT 


$in?snn 


10MR TAPF RACK UP 


«*qq nn 




GENERAL 



. $25.00/box 

$189 00 

$25.00 

$50.00 

$199.00 




(714) 838-7530 

2640 Walnut Avenue, Unit K, 
Tustin, California 92680 

(Prices & availability subject to change without notice- 
IBM is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation.) 



450 B YTE • APRIL 1 98 5 



Inquiry 266 



What the world really needs 

is a 99 cent 

Double Sided, Double Density Diskette 

with a LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



And DISK WORLD! has it. 



Introducing Super Star Diskettes: 

the high quality diskette with 

the lowest price 

and the best LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



In the course of selling more than a million diskettes 
every month, we've learned something: higher prices don't 
necessarily mean higher quality. 

In fact, we've found that a good diskette manufacturer 
simply manufactures a good diskette... no matter what 
they charge for it. (By way of example, consider that none 
of the brands that we carry has a return rate of greater than 
1/1,000thof 1 percent!) 

In other words, when people buy a more expensive 
diskette, they aren't necessarily buying higher quality. 

The extra money might be going toward flashier adver- 
tising, snazzier packaging or simply higher profits. 

But the extra money in a higher price isn't buying better 
quality. 

All of the good manufacturers put out a good diskette. 

Period. 

How to cut diskette prices 
. . .without cutting quality. 

Now this discovery posed a dilemma: how to cut the 
price of diskettes without lowering the quality. 

There are about 85 companies claiming to be "diskette" 
manufacturers. 

Trouble is, most of them aren't manufacturers. 

Rather they are fabricators or marketers, taking other 
company's components, possibly doing one or more steps 
of the processing themselves and pasting their labels on 
the finished product. 

The new Eastman Kodak diskettes, for example, are one 
of these. So are IBM 5%" diskettes. Same for DYSAN, 
Polaroid and many, many other familiar diskette brand 
names. Each of these diskettes is manufactured in whole 
or in part by another company! 

So, we decided to act just like the big guys. That's how 
we would cut diskette prices... without lowering the 
quality. 

We would go out and find smaller companies to manu- 
facture a diskette to our specifications... specifications 
which are higher than most... and simply create our own 
"name brand" diskette. 

Name brand diskettes that offered high quality at low 
prices. 



DISKETTE STORAGE 

CASES 



PERFECTDATA DIAL N FILE 

Terrific! Holds 10 5 V diskettes Just flip 
the lever and they all slide up for easy access 
and identification. Grey with smoked plastic 
front. 

$2.75 Ea. + .35 Shpng. 



DISK CADDIES 

The original flip-up holder for 10 5 1 /4" 
diskettes. Beige or Grey only 

$1.65 ea. - .20 Shpng. 

DISKETTE 70 STORAGE 

Dust-free storage for 70 SV*" diskettes 
Six dividers included An excellent value 
v $11.95 ea. + $3.00 Shpng. 






HOURS: 

Human: 8AM-6PM Central Time, Monday through Friday 

Answering Machine: 6PM-8AM, All Times 

MCI MAIL: 24 hours a day. 



I SUPER 1 

I STAR ■ 
■ DISKETTES ■ 


sw ™ 


W 5%" 


SSDD 


DSDD 


.91 ea. 


1 .99 ea. 


Qty. 50 I 


1 Qty. 50 



Super Star diskettes are sold in multiples ot 50 only. Diskettes are 
shipped with white Tyvec sleeves, reinforced hubs, user ID labels 
and write-protect tabs. 

Boy, did we get lucky. Our Super Star 

Diskettes are the same ones you've been 

using for years. . .without knowing it. 

In our search tor the low priced, high quality diskette of 
our dreams, we found something even more interesting. 

We found that there are several manufacturers who 
don't give a hoot about the consumer market for their 
diskettes. They don't spend millions of dollars in advertis- 
ing trying to get you, the computer user, to use their 
diskettes. 

Instead, they concentrate their efforts on turning outthe 
highest quality diskettes they can... because they sell 
them to the software publishers, computer manufacturers 
and other folks who (in turn) put their name on them. . .and 
sell them for much higher prices to you! 

After all, when a software publisher or computer manu- 
facturer or diskette marketer puts their name on a diskette, 
they want it to work time after time, everytime. (Especially 
software publishers who have the nasty habit of copy- 
protecting their originals!) 



HOW TO ORDER: 



ORDERS ONLY: 

1-800-621-6827 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 

INQUIRIES: 

1-312-944-2788 

FOR FASTEST SERVICE, USE NO-COST MCI MAIL: 

Our address is DISKWORLD. It's a FREE MCI MAIL 

letter. No charge to you. (Situation permitting, we'll 

ship these orders in 24 hours or less.) 

SHIPPING: 5V«" & 2W DISKETTES-Add $3.00 per each 
100 or fewer diskettes. OTHER ITEMS: Add shipping charges 
as shown tn addition to other shipping charges. PAYMENT: 
VISA, MASTERCARD and Prepaid orders accepted. COD OR- 
DERS: Add additional $3.00 special handling charge APO, 
FPO, AK, HI & PR ORDERS: Include shipping charges as 
shown and additional 5% of total order amount to cover PAL 
and insurance. We ship only to United States addresses, except 
tor those listed above. TAXES: Illinois residents, add 8% 

MINIMUM ORDER: $35.00 or 20 diskettes. 



Super Star Diskettes. You already know 

how good they are. Now you can buy 

them... cheap. 

Well, that's the story. 

Super Star diskettes don't roll off the boat from Pago- 
Pago or emerge from a basement plant just east of 
Nowhere. 

Super Star diskettes have been around for years... and 
you've used them for years as copy-protected software 
originals, unprotected originals. Sometimes, depending 
on which computer you own, the system master may have 
been on a Super Star diskette. And maybe more than once, 
you've bought a box or two or more of Super Star diskettes 
without knowing it. They just had some "big" company's 
name on them. 

Super Star Diskettes are good So good that a lot of 
major software publishers, computer manufacturers and 
other diskette marketers buy them in the tens or hundreds 
of thousands. 

We buy them in the millions. 

And than we sell them to you. 

Cheap. 

When every little bit counts, 
it's Super Star Diskettes. 

You've used them a hundred times... under different 
names. 

Now, you can buy the real McCoy, the same diskette that 
major software publishers, computer manufacturers and 
diskette marketers buy... and call their own. 

We simply charge less. 



Super Specials 



Order 50 Super Star Diskettes 
and we'll be happy to sell you an 
Amaray Media-Mate 50 for only 
$8.75, shipping included... a lot 
less than the suggested retail price 
of $15.95 




DISK WORLD!, Inc. 



Regular DISK WORLD! price: $10.95 ea. 
\^ +$2.00 Shpng. y 



The Super Star 
LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



Super Star Diskettes are unconditionally warranted 
against defects in original material and workmanship 
so long as owned by the original purchaser. Returns 
are simple: just send the defective diskettes with proof 
of purchase, postage-paid by you with a short expla- 
nation of the problem, and we'll send you the replace- 
ments. (Incidentally, coffee stained diskettes and 
diskettes with staples driven through them don't 
qualify as "defective") 



WE WILL MEET OR BEAT ANY NATIONALLY 

ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES 

SUBJECT TO THE SAME TERMS AND CONDITIONS. 



Suite 4806 

30 East Huron Street 

Chicago, Illinois 60611 



Inquiry 1 23 



APRIL I985 -BYTE 451 



Inquiry 371 







SUNTR0N5CS CO.iRJC. 

12621 Crenshaw Blvd., Hawthorne, CA 90250 

NEW BRANCH STORE IN ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA 17552 BEACH BLVD., #C, HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA 92647 (714) 842-1948 



1-800-421-5775 (Order Only) 
(213) 644-1140 (CA Order & Info } 

STORE HOURS 
Mon -Fn 9 am to 6 p m 

Sat 10 am to 5 p m 



TERMS: VISA MASTERCARD COD iCash or Certified 
Check Requiredi Check (Allow 2-3 Weeks for Clearing) 
Shipping & H C S3 00 tor 3 Lbs plus 50c tor each add I Lb 
Calif residents add Calif Sales Tax SiO 00 Minimum Order 
IBM and Apple are registered irade marks of IBM & Apple 



= == === XT Compatible Products 



CPU Board (w/128K) $399.00 

Computer Cabinet $69.00 

83 Key Full-Function Keyboard $99.00 

Monochrome Graphic Card (w/parallel printer port) $210.00 

130 Watt Power Supply $129.00 

135 Watt Power Supply $135.00 

150 Watt Power Supply $140.00 

Color Graphic Card $149.00 

FDD Controller Card $99.00 

Parallel Printer Card $59.00 

ASYNC & RS232 Card $75.00 

360KB DSDD (Slimline] Disk Drive $119.00 

IBM Parallel Cable ....... $19.00 

IBM Prototype Board $9.00 

Apparat EPROM Blaster $129.00 

MicroLog Z-80B Baby Blue II Co-Processor, Multi-Function 

(Run CP/M Software, Require 64K RAM) $499.00 

IBM Up-Grade Kit (4164-150NS) $19.50 per kit 

10MB Hard Disk [w Controller] $675.00 

IBM PC Mouse $147.00 

Quad Board II $249.00 

Quad 512 (w/64K RAM) $259.00 

Koala Graphics Table (w- Software) $105.00 

Keyboard Extension Cable $9.00 



Compatible Products 



Sun Z80 Card (w/o Software APPLE II & II + only) $49.00 

Sun 80 Column Card (w/Soft Switch) $85.00 

Power Supply (5 Amp) $59.95 

Cooling Fan . $42.00 

Floppy Disk Controller $42.00 

16K RAM Card $49.00 

128K RAM Card $159.00 

Parallel Printer Card $49.00 

Serial Printer Card $89.00 

RS232 Card for Modem $99.00 

EPROM Programmer (2716,32,64) $75.00 

Apple Disk Drive (Full height) $159.00 

Apparat EPROM Blaster $119.00 



SPECIAL SALE ITEMS 



S-100 Single Board Computer (Z80A) Kit $99.00 B/B $49.00 

S-100 Universal Floppy Disk Controller ... Kit $125.00 B/B $49.00 

S-100 ClockCalender Kit $89.00 B/B $42.00 

S-100 64K Static Memory Board (w/o RAM) . Kit $89.00 B/B $49.00 

S-100 Prototype Board (Sun 721 ) $9.95 

12' Amber TTL Hi-Res Monitor (20mHz) $135.00 

12' Green TTL Hi-Res Monitor (20mHz) $129.00 

12' Green Composite Hi-Res Monitor (22mHz) $99.00 

SKC DS/DD 5%" Diskette .... .... $14.95 per 10 



X!8K WAVE MATE BRINGS MUSCLE TO YOUR 
IBM PC/XT WITH ITS 80286 MOTHERBOARD 

BULLET-286 makes the XT perform with greater power and speed than the IBM PC/AT 



Its the new BULLET-286 motherboard for the IBM PC 
XT marketplace. This advanced-technology product 
utilizes the Intel microprocessor 80286 while maintain- 
ing both hardware and software compatibility with 
the IBM PC/XT. By simply re- 
placing the existing XT board 
with our new BULLET-286, you 
get greater power and speed 
than the IBM PC-AT. Thus, ex- 
isting PC/XT users can pre- 
serve their investment in 
hardware and software while 
moving a quantum leap be- 
yond PC-AT performance. 

The BULLET-286 contains a 
6 megahertz no wait state 
80286 microprocessor in 
place of the XT's 4.77 MHz 
8088. There is an 80287 math 
co-processor option, 8 IBM 
expansion slots, and enhanced 
ROM BIOS. The BULLET-286 
is equipped with 256K bytes of 




memory, expandable to 1 megabyte on-board, 

The BULLET-286 is compatible with the IBM PC/XT 
to a degree far beyond the IBM PC-AT product. Applicar 
tion programs and operating systems (PC-DOS, CP 
M, UCSD Pascal, Pick, Oasis, 
Unix-derivitives) available for the 
XT, can run without incompatibili- 
ties on the BULLET-286. 

You can order now. The BUL- 
LET-286 is available with 256K 
RAM, with options to 1 full mega- 
byte. Prices start at $1,995. 

Quantity discounts available. 
OEM and dealer inquiries 
welcome. 

APOLLO MARKETING 

(a division of Cai. Digital) 

22048 Sherman Way #316 
Canoga Park, CA 91303 
Tel: (818) 883-8390 Telex: 194369 
In Europe call: Brussels 649-1070 
Telex 61828 



452 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 28- 



ALL PRICES 
20% -40% OFF LIST 



PRINTERS 

OKIDATA 

ML182A, Replaces82A "New" , $ 239 

ML63A, 15" Para. & Ser 545 

ML92P, 160 cps 355 

ML92 IBM Graphics Comp 355 

ML92S, 160cps 465 

ML92 Apple Mac. 2K Graphics 475 

ML93P. 160cps 579 

ML93IBMGraphicsCornp 579 

ML93S, 160 cps 769 

ML84P.200cps 679 

ML84S.200cpS 779 

STAR MICRONICS 

SG-10, 120cps,2K buffer $ 249 

SG-15, 120 cps, 2K buffer 399 

SD-10, 160 cps, 10" carriage 369 

SD-15, 160cps,Corr.Qual 479 

SB-10 Draft & NLQ 24 wire printhead 799 

C. ITOH 

7500 APw/tract. (better than RX80) .$ 225 

Prowriter8510AP, 120 cps 299 

Prowriter8510BC2 T 120cps 389 

Prowriter8510SP, 180cps 399 

8510 BPI (IBM Compatible) 335 

Prowriterll 1 550 P, 15" 120 cps 449 

Prowriterll 1550BCD, 15" 120 cps . . 499 

1550 EP(IBM Compatible) 445 

1550 SP, 180 cps 525 

StarwriterFlO-40PU,40cps 889 

StarwriterA10-30 499 

PrintmasterF10-55PU,55cps 1029 

BROTHER 

HR25,25cps $ 669 

HR35.36cps 839 

DYNAX 

DX15XL20cps By Brother $ 379 

JUKI 

6100, L.Q. 18 cps w/proportional spc.$ 399 

6300 699 

TOSHIBA 

P1351 Dot Matrix. 192 cps, letter quality 

100 cps, does graphics. 3 in 1 printer $1199 

P1340 same as above but 10" carr. . . 685 

PANASONIC 

1091 w/Tractor, 120 cps, 1 yr. war. ..$ 279 

1092 439 

1093 669 

LEGEND 

880, 80 cps. FT & Graphics $ 229 

1080, 120 cps, FT & Graphics 275 

DISK DRIVES 

TANDON 

TM100-2forlBMPC $ 119 

ALPHA OMEGA 

10 Meg HD for IBM & Comp. w/Cont. Card 

13 Month Warranty $ 775 

TEAC 

55B Double Sided 360K $ 109 

Quad Density 189 

MPI 

55S Dbl/Dbl for IBM $ 78 

Drives For Apple & Franklin 
RANA SYSTEMS 

Elitel $ 199 

Elite II 339 

Elite III 389 

Controller add 75 

MICRO SCI 

A-2 $ 175 

A.5C for He w/cable 189 

A.5V 2 height for HE 199 

^Controller Add 70 



PRINTER 
ACCESSORIES 

ORANGE MICRO 

Grappler + $ 115 

Buffered Grappler +.16Kexp.64K . 159 
TOSHIBA 

Bi-Directional Tractor $ 149 

Font Disk for Down loading P1351 . . 48 
MICROTEK 

Dumpling GX (same as Grappler +) $ 69 

Dumpling GX W/16K buffer .... 135 

Dumpling GXW/32K buffer 147 

Additional Buffering 16K 12 

FOURTH DIMENSION 

Par. Card & Cable for Apple $ 47 

OKIDATA 

Plug and Play for IBM $ 49 

Okigraph I for82A/83A 49 

Tractor for82A & 92 49 

JUKI 

Bi-Directional Tractor $ 125 

Serial Interface 65 

CABLES 

IBM PC to Parallel Printer $ 18 

Serial Cable 18 



DISPLAY MONITORS 

QUADRAM 

Amber chrome IBM compatible . . . .$ 175 

AMDEK 

V300G $ 125 

V300A 135 

V310AforlBMPC 159 

Color 600 429 

Color 710 545 

TAXAN 

IBM Green Monochrome #121 $ 139 

IBM Amber Monochrome #122 145 

RGB IBM w/Cable #420 419 

RGB Super Hi-Res. #415 393 

RGBSuperHi-Res.#440 499 

RGB/Comp. Med. Res. #210 259 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS 

HX-12forusewithlBMPC .$ 455 

Max 12 Amber for IBM 179 

SR 12 Super Hi-Res 595 

Scan Doubler 185 

X-TRON 

AG-12, 1000 x 450 Hi-Res w/tlt. swvl. . $ 130 
AA-12, 1000 x 450 Hi-Res w/tlt. swvl. . 135 




EASTER SPECIALS!! 



APPLE PROF. SYSTEM 
All Apple S1375 

BUF. GRAPPLER + 
S159 

MICRO-SCI A-2 
S175 

C.ITOH 8510 AP 
S299 

APPLE SUPER SERIAL 
S135 

ANCHOR MARK XII 
S218 



TEAC 55B 

5109 

PARADISE MOD. G. C. 

S269 

VUTEK COLOR CARD 

2 yr. war. S175 

OKIDATA ML92 IBM 

S355 

HAYES 1200 

S435 

TAXAN No. 440 

S449 

MPI DRIVE FOR IBM 

S78 



85 




IBM 

IBMDos3.0 $ 

IBM Tech Ret. for PC 

PARADISE 

Modular Graphics Card $ 269 

ModuleA 79 

Module B 189 

64K MEMORY UPGRADE 

64K(9chips) $ 17 

AST RESEARCH 

Six Pak + w/64K $ 239 

Preview Call 

QUADRAM 

Quad Color 1 Board $ 199 

Exp. Quadboard w/64K 239 

Quadlink 3000 Run Apple sft on IBM 359 



IBM PC ACCESSORIES 

VUTEK (2 yr. war.) 
Vutek - CPS Board, RG 

w/Par. & Ser. Ports, 2 Yr. War $ 239 

Color Card (Here, comp.) 175 

Monographic Card (Here, comp.) . . . 275 

PERSYST BOARD 

Bob Hi-Res Display Adaptor $ 399 



KEYTROIUICS 

KB5151 $ 185 

ORCHID 

Blossom $ 245 

DATA PLUS 

384K Mem. Board w/OK $ 119 

XT Short Card, 384K Mem 185 



APPLE & FRANKLIN ACCESSORIES 



ACCESSORIES 

Kensington System Saver . . . 
FanforApplell&NEw/surge . 



37 



APPLE 

Super Serial Card $ 135 

ASTAR 

RF Modulator $ 17 



ADVANCED LOGIC SYSTEMS 

ZEngine2.2 $ 119 

MICROMAX 

Viewmax 128K extended 80 col. card 

for Apple IIE $ 124 

80 col. card for Apple II & II + .. 139 

MICRO-SCI 

64K, 80 Col. Card $ 85 



m 



PERSONAL SYSTEMS 

APPLE 

Professional Sys. incf: Apple IIE W/128K & 
80 col., tilt mon., duo disk w/con't kit . $1375 

Apple lie Lightweight Portable Call 

IBM 

IBM PC Barew/cont. & keyboard . . .$1150 

IBM PC 64K, 1 Drive 1325 

IBM PC64K, 2 Drives 1499 

IBM PC, 2 Drives W/256K 1599 

IBM XT, 128K, 10 Meg., 360K Dr 3495 

IBM AT Base Call 

IBM AT Enhanced Call 

Call About All "AT" Systems 
SANYO 

MBC 550-2 W/1320K Drive &sftwr. . $ 895 
MBC 555-2 w/2 320K Drives & 

more software 1075 

Portable , Call 

Serial Port for Sanyo 79 

TAVA 

TAVA PC1 Par & 1 Ser. Ports. 128K. 2-320K 

Drives. Color Card & Monitor $1499 

COMPAQ 

256K, w/2 -320K Drives $2150 

SOFTWARE 

LOTUS DEVELOPMENT CORP. 

Lotus 1-2-3 $ 295 

Symphony 437 

ASHTON TATE 

DBase III $ 419 

PRINTER SWITCH BOX 

EXPONENT 

Centronics Two Switch $ 89 

Centronics FourSwitch 125 

SerialTwoSwitch 79 

Serial Four Switch 115 



MODEMS 

ANCHOR 

Mark XII . .$ 225 

Volksmodem XII 185 

HAYES MICRO 

300 Baud Smart Modem .$ 205 

1200 Baud Smart Modem 435 

1200 B for IBM PC 379 

2400 Baud Modem 645 

Micro Modem IIE 259 

Chronograph 189 

DISKETTES 

PC DISKETTES 

Sgl./Dbl. (Box of 10) $ 16 

Dbl./Dbl.fBoxof 10) 18 

COMPUTER CONNECTION 

Sgl./Dbl. (Box of 10) $ 14 

Dbl/Dbl. (Box of 10) 16 

Sgl./Dbl. w/Disk Container(10) 20 

Bulk 50 & Up — Dbl./Dbl 1.35ea. 

5 yr. warranty 



GIVE US A CHANCE TO BEAT THE 
COMPETITION'S ADVERTISED PRICE. 



IF YOU SEE IT ADVERTISED FOR LESS, CALL 
COMPUTER CONNECTION FIRST FOR LOWEST QUOTE! 

We accept VISA, MasterCard, COD 

fw/deposit), Certified Checks 



MAIL ORDER: 

1 71 21 S. Central Avenue, Unit L 
Carson, California 90746 



NO SURCHARGE FOR CREDIT CARDS 



<posit_ 
'ire Transfers. Minimum Shipping 
Charge 54.00. Some items subject 
to back order. California Res. add 
SV»% Sales Tax. All returns are 
subject to a 15°c restocking charge 
and must be authorized by store 
manager within 10 days. Prices 
subject to change without notice. 
This Ad supersedes all others. 



ORDER LINE 
[800] 732-0304 

[Outside California] 

[213] 635-2809 

(Inside California] 
Mon.- Fn. 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. 
Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

CUSTOMER SERVICE: 
[213] 635-5065 
Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 



Inquiry 81 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 453 




COASTLINE COMPUTERS x/ call collect-free 

fe N * 213-329-4828 

-^■m.. " T^jSHto^v 213-324-8087 

' d '*""*' ^^SiraSH^^il 1956 W - 153 St > Gardena, CA 90247 

CONFIGURED SYSTEM SPECIALISTS 

ALL SYSTEMS INCLUDE NECESSARY CABLES AND ALL ARE TESTED BEFORE SHIPPING 

Please specify type of drives, speed of RAMs, type of monitor interface when ordering 

IBM PC * * : **T IBM PC 

• 2 55B Teac Vz High Drives ■ B" 1 * 2 Ful1 Hei 8 ht MPI Drives 

• 256K, BMC 13" Amb Mon. • Keyboard & Dr Controller 

• Monitor Interface m % B • 256K Memory 

ibm fe mmmm ibm pro 

EXCECUTIVE SYSTEM jpp*** '(HI EXECUTIVE SYSTEM 

• IBM PC w/256K jjjjf « • IBM PC w/256K 

• 2 Half High Drives Ml ' H • 2 360K Vz High Dr w/Cont 

• 8087-3 Math Coprocessor • 10 Meg Internal Hard Disk 

• Monochrome Monitor IBM IPC * Monochrome Monitor 

• Mono Card w/Par Port 2 Half High Epson Drives # Mono Card w/Par Port 

• DOS 2.1 Operating System (with 2 Year Warranty) • DOS 2.1 Operating System 

• Okidata 92P Dot Matrix 256K (150nSJ Memory • Juki 6100 Letter Quality 
Printer (160cps) Color Monitor w/Interface Printer (18cps) 

$2399 Tilt stand $1939 $3495 



Sav-On May Have Lower Over All Prices But No One Can Save You More 
On These Selected Items Than Coastline Computers 



INTEL 
Math Coprocessor 

8087-3 

(FOR IBM PC AND COMPATIBLES) 

$109.00 

Call for 8087 for IBM AT 


AST SIXPAC + 

Comes with 384K 

Expandable 

Clock Calendar, Par/Ser Port 

Plus Software 

$239.00 


IBM Memory Upgrade 

For IBM & Compatibles 
9 - 4164 

64K Upgrade $19.95 

128K Upgrade $40.95 


IBM CABLE 

Computer to Par Printer 
6 Foot Long 

$14.50 


BMC 

13" Amber Monitor 

$89.00 


IBM DOS 2.1 

IBM PC & XT 
Operating System 

$54.99 


QUANTITY ORDERS 

Call for Bigger Discounts 

Corporate & School Accts 
Call for Information 

Dealer Programs Avail - P.O.s Expedited 


HERCULES 
GRAPHICS CARD 

Monochrome w/Par Port 
For IBM & Compatibles 

$319.00 


Other Product Lines 
Available from Coastline 

Amdek • Princeton Graphics • Techmar • Teac 
Hercules • Compaq • Tandon • NEC • Intel 
Okidata • Quadram • Hayes • Alpha Omega 

Anchor • Bizzcomp • Juki • Epson • Plus More! 



Mail Orders To: 1956 W. 153 St., Gardena, CA 90247. Terms: Visa, Mastercard, COD;s and Wire Transfers. No surcharge for credit cards. 

UPS, Federal and Emery shipping available. Calif, residents add 6 x /2% sales tax. Prices subject to change without notice. Not responsible for typos. 

454 BYTE • APRIL 1985 Inquiry 439 




INFOCOM 

Apple, IBM a Macintosh 



CUTTHROATS- ENCHANTER 
DEADLINE SUSPECT 
INFIDEL SORCERER 
HITCHHIKER SEASTALKER 
WITNESSZORKI 
ZORK ILZORK III 



6827.99 
ea34.99 

ea31.99 
ea27.99 
ea27.99 

ea31.99 



MOCKINGBOARD He 
With Speech & Sound 169.99 
QUADVUE NEW! 
Monochrome Card 259.99 



ENTERTAINMENT 



Ap 
Ap 

AC 

:BM 

IBM 

IBM 

Ap/IBM 

AplBM 

Ap/IBM 

AplBM 

AplBM 

AplBM 

AplBM 

AplBM 

AplBM 

AplBM 



BEAGLE 1.0 SIver - NEW! 

DECATHLON 

SIR TECH Knight of Diamond 

WIZPLUS 

GATO 

MASTERTYPE 

SIR TECH Wizardry 

CHAMP LODERUNNER 

ELECTRONIC ARTS Arcnon 

Music Pinball Const. 

One On One/ Sky Fox 
FLIGHT SIMULATOR 
SARGONIII 
TRILLIUM Amazon, Rama 

Fahrenheit 451 Shadow 
WINDHAM Below The Root 

Swiss Family Robinson 



SCALL 

23.99 

27.99 

23.99 

29.99 

34.99 

44.99 

24.99 

31.99 

ea31.99 

e«31.99 

37.99 

34.99 

ea29.99 

ea29.99 

18.99 

18.99 



APPLICATION 
Heme A Business 



Ac 

AC 

.Ap 

AC 

Ap 

Ap 

iBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

IBM 

Ac IBM 

AplBM 

MAC 

MAC 



ASCII Express 


99.99 


CONTINENTAL Hm. Acct. 


44.99 


Home Accountant MAC 


75.99 


Tax Advantage 


39.99 


MONOGRAM Dollars & Sense 


79.99 


PFSRept, File. Graph, Whte 


mhm 


ASCII Express Pro 


139.99 


ASHTON-TATE dBase II 


299.99 


dBase III 


449.99 


Framework 


399.99 


CONTINENTAL FCM 


71.99 


Home Accountant 


84.99 


Tax Advantage 


49.99 


CROSSTALK 


139.99 


LOTUS 1-2-3 


299.99 


MICROPRO Telmerge 


119.99 


MONOGRAM Dollars & Sense 


109.99 


PFS Rept File, Graph, Write 


ea99.99 


MICRO COOKBOOK 


31.99 


MICROSOFT MULTIPLAN 


169.99 


MULTIPLAN/FILE 


ea 149.99 


PFS Report, File 


■MUM 




WORD PROCESSING 



AC 
AC 
■AC 
AC 
AC 
=BM 
;BM 

BM 

;BM 

!BM 



BANK STREET Wrrte Spell 
MICROPRO Wordstar 

Wordstar Pro w/CP-M 
SENSIBLE SPELLER 
SIERRA Screenwriter II 
BANK STREET Writer 
LIFETREE Volkswriter Deluxe 
MICROSOFT Wad w Mouse 
MICROPRO Wordstar 2000 

Wordstar 2000 Plus 



MODEMS 
HAYES 300 Baud 

12006 tor IBM 

Mcromooem lie 
NOVATION Apolecat II 300 Bd. 

Expansion Module 

J Cat 



279.99 
349.99 
89.99 
89.99 
59.99 
199.99 
299.99 
259.99 
359.99 



409.99 
239.99 
249.99 

29.99 
109.99 



Ap 
Ap 
Ap 



DLM 

Alien Addition/Minus Mission M22.99 

Alligator Mix Dragon Mix ea22. 99 

Division Multiplication ea22 99 



EDUCATIONAL 



LEARNING COMPANY 

Ap Bumble Games Plot ea27.99 

Ap Gertrudes Puzzle Secret ee29.99 
Ap Roc*ys Boot Robot Odyssey *»34.99 
AplBM Addition Magician Word Spinner 23.99 
Apt IBM Magic Sped Number Stump M27.99 
AplBM Moptown Hotel Reader Rabbit ei27,99 
PE AC HTREE ALGEBRA i-IV ea29 99 

ALGEBRA V 4 VI es34.99 



SPINNAKER 

Ap Grandmas House Kidwnter ea24,99 

Ap Kids On Keys 19.99 

Ap Sum Ducks 24.99 

Ap Trains 27.99 

AplBM Faeemate Fraction Fever M24.99 

AplBM DKHieDtddteKindercomp M 19.99 

AplBM Presidents Choice 27.99 

AplBM Snooper Troops I or II et31.99 

COLLEGE BOUND -Apple 

BARONS SAT 59.99 

CBS Mastering SAT 149.99 

PEACHTREESAT 37.99 

PEACHTREEPSAT 37.99 







HARDWARE 



ALSZ-Engine 


134.99 


AC 


TITAN Accelerator lie 


259.99 


CDP16K Ram Card 


39.99 


Ap 


Neptune 64K 


199.99 


Parallel Interlace w Cable 


39.99 


Ap 


Saturn 64K Ram 


279.99 


DAN PAYMAR Lower Case 1 


25.99 


IBM 


AST Six Pack Plus 64K 


279.99 


Lower Case 2, Rev 7 


19.99 


IBM 


KENSINGTON PC Saver 


29.99 


EXTENDED 80 Cot Card-He 


129.99 


iBM 


KOALA Touch Pad 


95.99 


KENSINGTON System Saver 


65.00 


'BM 


PLANTRONICS Color- Board 


375.99 


KOALA Touch Pad 


85.99 


,BM 


QUADRAM512 + 64K 


229.99 


MICRO-SCI A-2 Dnve 


199.99 


IBM 


E Ram 80 


129.99 


MICROSOR Ram Card 


74,99 


IBM 


MicrofazerSK-AJIConfig. 


149.99 


Softcard 


229.99 


IBM 


Quadboardlorll-NoK 


219.99 


ORANGE MICRO Grappler* 


114.99 


IBM 


Quadcolor I 


209.99 


Buffered Grappler 


179.99 


IBM 


Quadcolor Upgrade to II 


209.99 


THUNDERCLOCK 


109.99 


IBM 


TEACV4 Height Drive #55B 


159.99 



UTILITIES & 
ENHANCEMENTS 



Ac 
Ap 
Ap 

Ap 

Ap 

AC 

Ap 

Ac 

AC 

AC 

AC 

AC 

Ap 

Ap 

Ap 

IBM 

'BM 

IBM 

IBM 

AplBM 

MAC 



BEAGLED Code -HEW! 
Beagle Graphics 



Fat Cat 
GPLE 

TnpteDump 
BROOERBUND Dazzle Draw 

Graphics Library 

PnrtSbop 
COPY II Program 
EASTSIDE Wildcard II 
FONTRIX 

FINGERPRINT For Epson 
MERLIN 

MOCKINGBOARD 
COPY II Program 
FONTRIX 

NORTON UTILITIES 
SIDEKICK 
TURBO PASCAL 
COPY II Program 



APPLE PRE-BOOTS 

Apple Writer 

Apple Writer for Uttraterm 

Visicalc 

Visicalc w'Memory 

Expansion 

Visicalc tor Ultraterm 

VIDEX-Apple 

ENHANCER II 

FUNCTION STRIP 

HARDSWITCH 

PSIO 

SOFTSWITCH 

ULTRATERM 

VIDEOTERMwSoftsw. 



SCALL 
44.99 
17.99 
26.99 
32.99 
31.99 
44.99 
19.99 
39.99 
25.99 

111.99 
59.99 
44.99 
44.99 
89.99 
25.99 
99.99 
55.99 
41.99 
41.99 
25.99 

14.99 
23.99 
39.99 

66.99 
54.99 

99.99 
31.99 
14.99 
169.99 
25.99 
244.99 
219.99 



FOR IBM 

Get Organized 149.99 

Sideways 44.99 



MACINTOSH 

MICROSOFT 

Basic 109.99 

Chart 99.99 



USI Pi4 

20mhz Amber Monitor 
For Apple 



99" 



MAXELL 5V«SS 10/100 
MEMOREX3V2SS 10/100 
MEMOREX 5% SS 10/100 
FLIP-FILE Holds SO-S 1 /* 
MEDIA MATE Holds 30-3'/? 



19.99189. 

41.99/399. 

18.99/179. 
14.99 
11.99 



PRINTERS & MONITORS 
SCALL 



EPSON FX80 

RX80 
PRINCETON HX- 12 RGB 

Max-12 Amber 
TAXAN12'Amber-lBM#122 

12* Green-IBM #123 

420 RGB Color-IBM 
OKIDATA 92 ■ Plug n Play 



499.99 
329.99 
459 99 
179.99 
169.99 
159.99 
399.99 
459.99 






PULL UtALbK SUKPOHT 

VISIT OUR SHOWROOM 
Hrs. 8:30AM - 5 OOPM M-F 



Computer Discount Products 

860 So. Winchester Bl., San Jose, CA 95128 

(408) 985-0400 FROM 8AM PST Inquiry 82 

NO CHARGE FOR CREDIT CARDS •GUARANTEED FAIR PRICING 

Purchase Order Prices Differ- Call First • Prices Subject To Change • Software Sales Final 
■V PLEASE ALLOW TIME FOR PERSONAL CHECKS TO CLEAR 



X 



Cashiers Check/ MO, P.O.'t from Qualified firms APO accepted Shipping 
minimum S4 first 3 Lbs. Tex: AZ Res. Only add 6% sales tex. AM returns 
subject to 20% restocking fee Advertised prices for Meil Order Only Retail 
prices slightly higher Prices subject to change 

Inquiry 338 for Dealers. 
Inquiry 339 for End Users. 



m 



icro 
Products 



f#nter nations I 



Shower Specials 

'2±d*M New Hayes SmartModem Compatible! IMtSS 



Finatty a prtct brtikthmugh on a Hayes compatible, external 300. 1 200 
baud modem This low pnce is without 



• Huns trie popular 
Hayes communications software 



V^.Q 







IBM PC FLOPPY DISK SYSTEM 

Bosk system includes 256K, two floppy drives 360K each, 
drive controller and keyboard 



IBM PC 10MB SYSTEM 

Basic system includes 256K, one floppy drive, keyboard, 
10MB Hard Disk with controller (boots from hard disk] 



We have not given System prices due to continuous 
changes in the PC market and our policy of having the 
best prices and availability. Simply COMPARE our 
peripheral prices and for even greater savings CALL 
FOR LATEST SYSTEM PRICES ... 




IBM PC 20MB SYSTEM 

Basic system includes 256K, one floppy drive, keyboard, 
20MB Hard Disk with controller (boots from hard disk) 



IBM PC 30MB SYSTEM 

Basic system includes 256K, one floppy drive, keyboard, 
30MB Hard Disk with controller (boots from hard disk) 



Choose from the widest selection of enhancement 
products for your IBM PC system at the best prices. 
Start with the Basic system and configure it according 
to your needs. All Hard Disk systems are available with 
2 floppy drives. All IBM Systems come only with 
COMPUMAIl's 90 doy warranty. 



• PRICE WAR • uuusLAST 



PRINTERS 



EPSON RX-80 $229 FX-80 + $389 
RX-80FT + $279 FX-100+ $569 
LQ-1 500 Parallel $1099 Serial $1199 
LQ-1 500 Tractor/Cutsheet Feeder $50/$399 
NEW JX-80 COLOR CALL 



OKIDATA92P/93P/84P $349/$559/$669 

NEW OKIMATE 20 Color w/Plug & Print CALL 

NEW 182P Personal Printer CALL 



TOSHIBA 1340P 
TOSHIBA 1351P 



$669 
$1199 



JUKI 6100/6300 



$379/5699 



BROTHER HR-1 5 XL (20 CPS) $329 

HR-25 (23 CPS) $549 HR-35 (36 CPS) $749 
Tractor/Sheet Feeder for HR-25/35 $1 19/$199 

M-1009 $199 2024L LQ/6raphics $999 

2024L CuTsheet Feeders - Narrow $199 Wide ..$249 



C. ITOH8510-BPI $309 8510-SEP 

8510-SCEP $439 1550-EP 

1550-P $449 1550-SEP 

F-10(40CPS) $859 F-10(55CPS) 



$379 
$429 
$529 

$1049 



QUME LETTERPRO 20P$429 SPRINT 1 HO + $1299 
SPRINT 1155 + $1499 1190+ CALL 

INTERFACE MODULES Centronics/Serial/IBM Par $80 



HARD DISKS/BACKUP 



HARD DISKS/BACKUP for IBM PC 

10MBHD $599 20MBH0 $899 

10 MB Tape Backup $599 Larger HD & BackupsCALL 

TALL GRASS NEW PC/T FORMAT 

25 MB w/60 MB $2799 35 MB w/60 MB $3599 
50 MB w/60 MB $4399 80 MB w/60 MB $5999 
Controller $140 Cortridge(60 MB) $35 
QUBIE 10/20 MB Internal or External CALL 

KAMERMAN Masterflight w/10, 20 or 30 MB HD 

and 1 0, 20 or 60 MB streamer tape backup w/controller cards, 

5 plug power control, surge protection and lock. 

Call for BEST price for your RIGHT combination 

MAYNARDJOMB/WS~1$849 10MB/WS-2$969 
30MB/WS-1A $1999 30MB/WS-2A $2099 
MaynStream - Complete cartridge backup system CALL 

AMPEX PC Megastore 20MB w/25MB stmrCALL 

SYSGEN 1 0MB tope backup $799 

QIC File - 4 5MB tape backup - Int/Ext $ 1 1 95/$ 1 295 
1 MB/20 MB Hard Disc w/streomer tope backup . CALL 

GENIE Fixed/Removable Systems Entire line 



WITH YOUR BEST QUOTES 



MODEMS 



FLOPPY DISKS 



NECP-2 $649 P-3 $899 

2050 $669 3550 $1299 8850 $1699 



DIABLO 630 ECS/IBM $ 1 799 630 API $1 599 
Advantage D-25 $549 620 API $729 



DATA PRODUCTS 

SPG 8051 (Same as IBM Color Printer) $1399 

SPG 8071 (Same as 8051 at twice the speed) $1 799 



TEACHalfHtFD55B-D$DD 



$109 



CDC Full Ht/HalfHt-DSDD $139 



IBM Full Ht-DSDD 



$159 



MONITORS 



PGSMAX-1 2 Amber-Monochrome (800x350) CALL 

HX-1 2 (690x240) $429 SR-l 2 (690x480) $599 
COLOR CARD for SR-12 (single slot) CALL 



T ANDON 1 00-2 Full Ht/Half Ht-DSOD $ 1 1 9/S99 



• SUPER SPECIALS* 



64K RAM Set of 9 Chips $20 



MICROCOM ERA-2 Int. w/software $359 

HAYES 1 200 B Internal w/software $369 

1 200 Standalone w/o software $419 

NEW 2400 Baud CALL 

POPCOMC-100/X-100 Special Low PriceT 

PROMETHEUS PROMODEM 1200 Ext $319 
PROMODEM 1 200B Internal w/software $275 

NOVATION Access 1 23 Int. w/ Crosstalk $399 
NEW Smart Cat Plus w/MITE software - Int. or Ext. $349 

VENTELHorf Card 1 200 for short slot $419 

QUBIE Standalone $309 Internal $279 
BIZCOMP Inteltimodems XL/XT/ST CALL 

EVEREX Graphics Edge Best Price Ever 

AST Monograph Plus w/clock, PP & Serial $399 

PERSYSTBoB Board $449~ 

MYLEX Mono/Color Graphics & printer port $449 
PARADISE Modular Brd $269 Modules CALL 
INTELLIGENT M50 Mono/Color/printer . $249 
TECMAR Graphics Master w/PC Paintbrush .... $449 
HERCULES MonoGraphics $299 Color $159 



MULTI-FUNCTION CARDS 



ASTSIXPAKw/64K $245 Exp, to 384K $375 



QUADBOARD0 K $219 Exp.to384K $369 



ORCHID Blossom OK $195 Exp, to 384K $345 



TAXAN COMPOSIT 1 15 Grn/1 16 Amber $139 

MONO 121 Green/122 Amber (1000x360) $159 

411(510x260) $349 425(640x262) $449 

440 (720x400) $549 W/Persyst BoB Brd $969 



AMDEK 300G/300A/310A (M) $1 39/51 49/CALL 
COLOR 600 (640x240) $429 710(720x480) CALL 



SAMSUNG Mono-Grn/Amber 



$129 



AST SIXPAK w/64K $245 Exp, to 384K $375 



HAYES 1200Bw/sft $369 1200 Ext $419 



HARD DISK 10 MB/20 MB 



$599/$899 



OKIDATA92P $349 93P $559 84P..S669 



TOSHIBA 1340P 



$669 1351P 



$1199 



ORCHID PCturbol 86 w/640K 



$1099 



BROTHER HR-1 5 XL (20 CPS) $329 

HR-25 (23 CPS) $549 HR-35 (36 CPS) $749 



HERCULES MonoGraphics . . $299 Color . . $1 59 



8087-3 Math Chip for IBM PC (Intel) $129 



IBM s original PC Keyboard 



COMPANY POUCY: Mm onto $100 Puces & availability subject to 
change We ship UPS. Shippmaftandling chmges vary. COD requires tosh, money 
order, cosher or certified check. Personal I Company checks take 3 weeks to dear. No 
refunds. 20% restocking fee on oil returns, Compumoil credit issued for botence Coil 
for return ourhoriartkxi #for repairs/returns No open occt. P0 s or foreign orders For 
advance payment or PICKUP: Please coll first for workorder number. 



QUADRAM AMBERCHROME (720x350) CALL 
QUADCHROME II (640x240) Color Graphics & Text $429 



EMULATION BOARDS 



ORCHID'S PCturbo 186 (128K to 640K) . Best Prices 

IRMA/IRMALine/IRMAPrint $859/$929/$929 
IRMALette $299 IRMALine/IRMAUtte Package $999 
CXI 3278/79 PLUS PC Connection Coax or Modern version 
CXI 3270 PC Connection CALL 



COMPU 



3541 OLD CONEJO ROAD, SUITE 102, THOUSAND OAKS, CA 91320 



$129 



AMERICAN 
EXPRESS 



NO jUBOjARgj ON COD, VKA or MC 



BT 6 PIUS (tike sixpak) w/64K $219 Exp, to 384K . $349 
IDSB-512w/64K $219 Exp.to512K $399 



MISC. ADD ONS 



8087-3 Math Chip for IBM PC (Intel.) $129 



Floppy Drive Controller for IBM PC $119 



CABLE Parallel 
Keyboard Ext, 6 ft. 



$20 Serial 
$10 Smart Cable 



$25 
CALL 



DISKETTES DSOD TOP BRAND Box of 10 



$25 



QUBIE Keyboard 51 50 $119 5151 $149 



KEYTRONIC Deluxe Keyboard KB 51 51 $159 



TOOL KIT 8 piece set in a convenient pock 



$29 



TILT/SWIVEL Monitor Base 



.$30 



PC Keyboard Storage Drawer . .$89 



KENSINGTON Master Piece (5 Outlets) 



$109 



COMPUTER ACCESSORIES P2 (5) $109 

POWER DIRECTOR P22 (4) $79 P12 (6) $149 



STANDBY PWR SUPPLY w/surge protection 

200 Watts $279 300 Watts $379 800 Watts CALL 



KOALA Touch Tablet w/software $89 



805-498-6635 



458 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



$av-On Computers 800-345-7100 



ORDERS INSIDE CALIF - 213-675-2115 



CUSTOMER SERVICE & TECHNICAL HELP - 213-675-2382 



PRINTERS 

STAR MICRONICS 

GEMINI 10X (120cps) $249 

GEMINI 15X (120cps, 15" Car) . . .389 

OKIDATA 

82A (120cps, 10", par/ser.) $309 

92A (160cps, parallel) . .349 

93A (160cps, parallel) 599 

84P (200cps, parallel) 789 

OKI PLUG & PLAYS AVAILABLE Call 



EPSON 




RX80 


Call Prices 


RX80FT 


Much Lower 


FX80 


Than Your 


TRACTORS 


Authorized Dealers 



$108 
109 



NEC 

JB1201 (12" Green Composite, 
800ctr Lines, 20MHz) $129 

JB1205 (12" Amber Composite, 
800ctr Lines, 20MHz) 129 

OTHER MONITORS IN STOCK. . Call 



Sav-On Sytems - Your Systems House 



APPLE PRO SYSTEM 

CPU w/64K and Drive Controller 

2 Drives, 80 Col Card (extended), 

Apple Green Monitor & Stand 

$1349.00 



Sav-On APPLE COLOR 

Apple 64K Computer. Ext 80 Col 
Card. Amdek Color Mon.. Dual Dr 



OTHER EPSON PRODUCTS AVAIL. 

JUKI 

6100 (18cps & let. quality) $409 

6300 {40cps, 16", comes with 

3K Buffer, Upgrade to 15K) 789 

BROTHER Call 

DYNAX Call 

NEC Call 

MONITORS 

PRINCETON GRAPHICS 

HX12 (12" Color RGB/TTL, High 
Res, 690x240 lines, 15Mhz) . . . .$449 

SR12 (12" Color RGB/TTL, High 
Res, 690x480 Lines, 25Mhz 599 

MAX12 (12" Monochrome TTL, 
960ctr Lines, 18Mhz 179 

SCAN DOUBLER 199 

AMDEK 

300 (13" Color Composite, 

300x260 Lines, 4MHz .$259 

300A 12" Composite Amber, High 

Res) 139 

310A (12" Monochrome, TTL) 179 

COLOR II + (13" RGB/TTL, 560x240 

Lines, 18MHz) 399 

500 (13" Color RGB/Com posite/TTL, 

320x240 Comp., 560x240 RGB, 

12MHz) 419 

600 (RGB/TTL, 640x240 Lines, 

16MHz, 16 Colors) 419 

710 (13" RGB/TTL, 720x480 Lines, 

18MHz, 16 Colors) .549 

ZENITH 

ZVM122 12" Amber $99 

ZVM123 12" Green 99 

LEADING EDGE 

GORILLA 12" Green $98 

GORILLA 12" Amber 98 

TAXAN 

121 (12" Green) 

122 (12" Amber) 



$1529.00 



COMPAQ 



2 Drives with 256K. Portable 

$2095.00 



COMPAQ PLUS 



1 Dr & 10M Internal 



$3395 



DISKETTES 

DYSAN 

5V4" DS/DD (Box of 10) $28 

MODEMS 

HAYES 

300 $199 

1200 External, PC Compatible . . . .469 
1200B Internal, PC Compatible . . .399 
MICRO MODEM Me 239 

NOVATION 

ACCESS 123 Call 

J-CAT Call 

APPLE CAT Call 

ANCHOR 

MARK VII (300 Baud) 

MARK XII (1200 Baud) 

MARK VI 

CALL FOR PRICING ON 
OTHER MODEMS 

APPLE ADD-ONS 



$99 
239 
.69 



TG 




JOY STICK 


Call For 


SELECT PORT 


Lowest 


PADDLES 


Prices 



MICROMAX 

VIEWMAX 80 $130 

VIEWMAX 80e 130 

KENSINGTON 

SYSTEM SAVER $69 

MORE AVAILABLE Call 



DRIVE CONTROLLER CARDS 

IBM Original (Controls 4 drives) . .$139 
MAYNARD (Any Configuration) . . .Call 

IBM Copy (120 Day Warranty) 119 

PC COMPATIBLE DRIVES 

CDC (IBM Compatible) $159 

TANDON Full Height 320K 159 

MPI A2 (IBM Compatible) 119 

TALLGRASS HARD DISKS 

20, 35 or 70Mbyte w/Back-up .... Call 

MAYNARD, ALPHA OMEGA, GENIE 
CALL FOR PRICING 
L.D.C. 

LOTUS 123 & SYMPHONY Call 

AST 
SIX PAC PLUS (1 Ser/1 Par Port, 

Clock w/0 memory) $239 

SIX PAC PLUS (1 Ser/1 Par Port, 

Clock & 64K exp. to 384K) .249 

SIX PAC PLUS ( 1 Ser/1 Par Port, 

Clock & 384K Memory) 409 

I/O PLUS (1 Ser & 1 Clock) 129 

I/O PLUS (1 Ser/ 1 Par & Clock) . . 165 

MEGA PLUS (64K) 269 

MEGA PAC (128K) 269 

MEGA PAC (256K) 349 

OTHER AST BOARDS AVAILABLE 
CALL FOR PRICES 
QUADRAM 

COLOR 1 $199 

COLOR 2 & OUADBOARDS Call 

HERCULES 

MONOCHROME (Hi Res Graph) $329 

COLOR CARD 199 

TECHMAR 

GRAPHICS MASTER (Runs Mono & 

Color, High Res in Both Modes $459 

STB 

GRAPHICS (PLUS) II Supports Both 

Color and Mono Display $339 

PC PEACOCK 

COLOR BOARD with Par. Port . $209 

PLANTRONICS 

COLOR PLUS 339 

KEYTRONICS 

5151 Keyboard w/Sep Num. Pad .Call 

5150 Keyboard Call 

IBM PC SYSTEMS 

IBM PC w/o Drives, 64K and Drive Controller $1299 

IBM PC 64K, 1 360K Drive, Controller (Handles 4 Drives) .1429 

IBM PC 256K, 2 360K Drives and Controller 1450 

All IBM's include keyboards, all necessary cables, manuals and 90 warranty 

IBM PC XT 128K, 1 360K Dr and 1 Internal 10M Hard Disk .3395 

IBM AT (Base Model) 256K, 1.2M Floppy, Clk Cal, 8 Exp Slots + more . .3849 
IBM AT (Enhanced) 51 2K, 1.2M Floppy, 20M Hard Drive, Ser/Par Ports . . .5495 

IBM PC JR (All IBM Product Drive, Monitor, RAM) Call for Price 

IBM 

PC, XT Operating Sys 2.1 $59 

AT Operating Sys 3.0 69 

MONOCHROME MONITOR 239 

COLOR MONITOR 589 

COLOR CARD, HX12 (IBM Comp) 189 

MONO CARD w/Par Print Port 229 

PC Par or Ser Print Port 73 ea 



IBM PC SYSTEM 

w/2 Drives, 256K Memory 



$1699.00 



IBM XT SYSTEM 



$3850.00 



IBM PC COLOR SYS 



$2075.00 



PRINTER INTERFACE 
and PERIPHERALS 

PRINTER CABLES 

ALL MAKES (G foot long) 

FOURTH DEMINSION 

PAR CARD & CABLE for Apple . 

ORANGE MICRO 

GRAPPLER + $119 

GRAPPLER + W/16K 169 

OKIDATA 

SERIAL INTERFACE $89 

MICRO TEK 

DUMPLING GX Call 

BAM 16 Call 



$18 



$48 



64K Mem Upgrade $24.95 
128K Mem Upgrade $50.00 

All RAM Chips have 90 Day Guar. 

All are 200nS or Better Speed 
Dealers Call— We sell to Major Distr 



INTEL 8087-3 5MHz 

Math Coprocessor for PC and Compatibles 

1pcs. S139 ea. 5pcs. S125 ea. 10pcs. $120 ea. 

(Also available for AT. 8087-8MHz and 8087) 



FINANCING AVAILABLE— with approved credit 
DEALERS: Open Accounts available, call for applications 
TERMS: We accept VISA, MASTERCARD, COD's, and Wire 
Transfers. UPS, Federal Express and Emery shipping available. 
California residents please add 6V2% sales tax to order. Prices 
are subject to change without notice. Not resposible for 
typographical errors. 



RAM CHIPS — 64K $25.95 



All RAM Chips are compatit 
ith IBM XT/compatible mach 
apanese and American Brar 



1000pcs S1.90 



DISK DRIVES 



TEAC 55B 360K 
1pcs. $119 ea 1C 



igh DS/DD Drives for IBM 
$113 ea I5pcs. $109 ea 



TANDON 100-2 360K Full Height 
1pcs. $145 ea 5pcs. S140 ea 1 



3D Drives 
. $132 ea 



Sav-On Computers, inc. 

12595 Crenshaw Blvd., Hawthorne, CA 90250 

OPEIM:7:30am till 6:00pm Monday-Friday and 9:00am till 2:00pm Saturday 

Inquiry 344 




MasterCard VISA or UPS CASH COD 

Factory New, Prime Parts juPoo 

MICROPROCESSORS UNLIMITED 

24.000 South Peona , 
BEGGS. OK 74421 

Prices shown above are for March 11, 1985 

Btse call tor current press Prices subset lo change Please eiped higher or towe' pnees on 
is parts due to supply & demand and our changing costs Shipping & insurance extra Cash 
xjunt pnces shown Small orders received by 6 PM CST ca n usually be delivered to vou by 
new rooming, via Federal Eipraaa Standard Air (a S6.S0' 



(918)267-4961 



Serial 4 ■ l,m11 ■ ^ Parallel 




Convert What You Have 
To What You Want ! 

" RS232 Serial * Centronics Parallel 

* 8 Baud Rates * Handshake Signals 

* Latched Outputs * Compact 3',; x 4% x 1V, 

No longer will your peripheral choices be limited by the type 
of port you have available! Our new High Performance 700 
Series Converters provide the missing link. Based on the 
latest in CMOS technology, these units feature full baud 
rate selection to 19. 2K, with handshake signals to maximize 
transfer efficiency. Detailed documentation allows 
simplified Installation. Order the Model 770 (Ser/Par) or 
Model 775 (Par/Ser) Today! 



tiaErirnnks 



2734-C Johnson Dr. 

Post Office Box 3717 

Ventura. California 93006 



I 95 



Connector Option $10.00 
CA Residents 8% tax 
UPS Snipping WOO 



CALL (805) 658-7466 or 658-7467 
CS For FAST Delivery I 




~~ 



ISOBAR... cleans up 

your line power! The 

most complete computer 

protection available! 

More features to prevent errors, fatse print- 
out, disc skips! Only Isobar has 3-way spike 
protection, noise suppression for RF! plus 
isolated filter banks! Prevents components 
in your system from interfering with each 
other and erratic line power from damag- 
ing the system! 

Models $55 to $98. Free brochure. 

CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-662-5021 or write: 

INDUS-TOOL, Dept. BT 

325 W. Huron, Chicago, IL 60610 



Inquiry 265 



inquiry 142 



Inquiry 197 




Heath 
Users 



Double Your 
5%" disk storage 
capacity without adding; a drive. 

Get twice as much from your H88 or 
H89 microcomputer. Our FDC-880H 
floppy disk controller, in conjunction 
with your 5V/' drives, for example, 
expands memory capacity from 256 
bytes to 512 bytes per sector. 

And it handles single and double- 
sided, single and double-density, 8" and 
5*4" drives — simultaneously. 



Ol 



C.D.R. Systems Inc. 

Controlled Data Recording Systems Inc. 
7210 Clairmont Mesa Blvd., San Diego, CA 92111 

(619) 560-1272 



IBM PC/ VT 100 

EM 100 

for IBM PC, XT, AT 

APRICOT and VICTOR 9000 

VT102 emulation, English 
setup menu, 110-9600 BAUD, 
ASCII file transfer, Modem 7 
binary transfer, 132 columns, 
soft keys, and more! Optional 
Tektronix 4010 emulation. 



% 



Multicopy discounts 

Diversified Computer 
Systems, Inc. 

100 Arapahoe, Boulder, CO 80302 
(303) 447-9251 

Dealer inquiries invited, 



DISK 



BOOT 



patas 



FiXT ends 
boot hassles, 
stops data 
thieves — 

DATAMAC, DAVONG, 

GREAT LAKES, IOMEGA, 

XEBEC, ZOBEX, others. 

No-Slot Installation for 
IBM PC, COMPAQ, COLUMBIA 

$70 - $95 + tax/shpg 

GOLDEN BOW 
SYSTEMS 

Box 3039 

San Diego 

CA 92103 

619/298-9349 




Inquiry 62 



Inquiry 125 



Inquiry 171 



DISK DRIVES 

Half Height 
IBM Compatible 

ONE YEAR 
WARRANTY 

40 tr. DS/DD $115.00 

80 tr. DS/DD $139.00 

1.2 meg. floppy .... CALL 
Enclosures and mounting kits 
Special bracketed pair pricing 

IN + 2 DAY 
STOCK X SHIP 



fP ALLIED MICRO DEVICES 

2809 Boardwalk, Ann Arbor, Ml 48104 

(313) 996-1282:TX 2907707 AMEL 

* Manufactured by SANYO 



IBM COMPATIBLE 



$650.°° 



DYNA PC 64K BASIC UNIT 

* 64K system board 

" 130W switching power supply 

USA made Hi-Tek Keyboard* 

Case with flip-up top cover 

DYNA PC 256K COMPLETE SYSTEM 

256K system board 

Keyboard/ 130W power supply/case 

2% Ht. 360K disk/controller" 

AST 6-PAK compatible board e-| >■ n C OO 

Hercules compatible board " ^fS/ O. 

or Color graphic board 

Monochrome monitor 

DYNA XT 256K COMPLETE SYSTEM 

DYNA PC 256K complete system 
10MB hard disk (20MB optional) < 
DTC hard disk controller 



D $2145.°° 



****************************************** 

OEM and DEALER inquiries invited 
****************************************** 



DYNA SYSTEMS 

1500 Wyatt Drive, Suite 8 
Santa Clara, CA 95054 



408) 748-8501 
:: 317994 Dyna 




(gV,ROSE DATA SWITCHES 

SHARE computers, printers, 
any parallel or serial device 
ELIMINATE cable swapping 
INEXPENSIVE way to network 
COMPATIBLE with 
all computers 

Businesses, Schools, Homes 
WE ALSO OFFER: 
Data Buffers, Line Drivers, 
Modems. Protocol Converters, 
Parallel - Serial Converters, 
Cables, Computers. Printers, 
Disk Drives, and more 
AUTOMATIC - CARETAKER is ideal tor a business or 
school to sharea printer or modem among many computers 
Operation is fully automatic with no software required. 
Parallel or Serial 4 channels - $295 8 channels - $395 
MANUAL - HAROSWITCH is operated with the flip of a 
switch. 2:2 and 2:4 models allow simultaneous commun- 
ication. 

Serial 1:2 -$59 1:4-$ 99 2:2-$109 2:4-$169 

Parallel 1:2 -$99 1:4 -$159 2:2 -$189 2:4 - $279 
LED and spike protection on serial models add $20 
CODE ACTIVATED - PORTER connects one computer to 
multiple peripherals. A software code selects the peripheral 
Parallel or Serial 4 channels - $295 8 channels - $395 
Buffer option 64K - $100 256K - $250 
REMOTE - TELEPATH connects multiple computers to 
multiple peripherals A selector at each computer or terminal 
chooses up to 4 peripherals and displays busy status. 
4 4 - $495 4:8 - $795 selector - $39 
■- ■ 04ve <* ^*« H» ifoti e&mflutet ^^^=^^^= 

ROSE ELECTRONICS (713) 240-7673 

P.O. BOX 742571 MC & VISA Accepted 

HOUSTON, TX 77274 Dealer Inquiries Incited 

CALL US FOR ALL YOUR INTERFACE NEEDS 



Inquiry 19 



Inquiry 129 



inquiry 337 



* | 

M 

« i 

\I 
M 
M 
f! 
A 

I f 

I I 



v/Asvrr 



GmpuPro | & COEX 



The Perfect S-100 Team! 



CPU-Z 
The Z80 Standard 

6 MHz Z60D CPU 

24 Bit Addressing 
BOTH BOARDS 
PURCHASED 
TOGETHER: 

BPVIACOX (Sh. wt. 3 lbs.) 
BPGBT160A CPU Board Only: 

BPC0X64KRAM64K RAM Only 



64K Low- 
Power 6MHz 

S-100 RAM Cord 

24 Bit Addressing 




$179.00 
$179.00 



100MHz 
Dual Trace 
Dual Time- 
Dose 

$>* 

BPBKP1580 

List Price: 
$1595.00 



S4<PRECtSI0N 




PROBES INCLUDED! 




64K & 256K Memory 
Expansion Sets 



64 K Expansion, Contains BPFDBIBMMEM9 
9 64K x 1 iSOnS RAMs $18.00 
256K Expansion, Contains BPfDBIBMMEM36 
36 64 K x 1 150nS RAMs $59.95 
256 K Expansion, Contains BPP062S6MEM9 
9 256K x 1 RAMs $99.00 



I DM AT Compatible Hard Disk Drive 



20Mbyte rwa as» 'ornatta SEAGATE 5iDsBPSEAST225F $ 795 

33 Mbyte IBM color vKjec card 2IDS BPlBM 1504910 S 250 

iBM Monochrome Ca;d 2'os BPIBMI504900 S 250 

IDM-PC u COMPATIBLE MONITORS 



■■■■, - ... . - r-'--'-.^-:.' i 4J- 

STD CARDS :s each, 

■-> BPSTBSfilO S 319 

Super i ii BPSTSIO $ 199 

Rhl PLUS u-64Ki BPSTBRlOPLS S 289 

Graphic PLUS II BPSTBGRPLS2 S 395 

PARADISE 

5 »a-'.- Mu'lrfuncw card 364 k 8PPAR5PACK384 S269 

,, CarC BPPARMDC S349 

Moo-a- Graphics Care 8PPARMGC 5245 

■ - iM 0" 'Or aOOve WB W 384K BPPARM0DA384 $209 

PS'8 * y/' ' • •■ fi 3PPARM0DHPAR S 7<\ 



TECMAR DOARDS 

mt '.APT* i 'J " Mutfl board 64 K BPTECCAPTAlN S 259 

GRAPHICS MASTER-- BPTECGRMSTfl S 499 

. "tSSi'itrjr iBMPC" BslciBPTECEXPCHS S 749 

HERCULES GRAPHIC CARDS 

BPHECGC S 339 

■ ■: I .-. to rjnmei pon BPHECCOLOR S 1 79 

QUADRAM CARDS 2 ^ each, 

AH ■ BPODRQDBRDXPO S 239 



O'jADCQlQR i ' 

mil* 

i ! RS232 



BPQDflODBRDIIO 

9PCJDR0DCLRI 

BPQORQDCLRll 

BPQDRQD512+ 

BPQDRQDL1NK 

BPQDRRS232 

BP00RRS232EXP 

BPQDRIP1C 



VIDEO MONITORS 



urtia 18 ids 

: 
\I»U 1? Aintier 24 Ids 
iUHl 12 CfWi IB Ihs 
■■•■/ 12 Amber 18 Ufc 
U 



BPSY0DM2212 

BPSV0DM8H2CX 

BPSV0DM82I2CX 

BPTAX115 

BPTAX116 

BPSYODM750G 



MODEMS 

D**cripr1on 



PRINTERS & DUFFERS 



HAYES 

1 200 Baud Smartmodem 4 lbs BPDCH0400P $429 

1200 Baud for IBM-PC" w/software 9POCH1200B $ 429 

300 Baud Smartmodem BPDCH0200P S 249 

Miciomodem II lor Apple BPDCH7014Q0 S 249 

PROMETHEUS 

ProModem 1200 baud auto dial/ans 4 lbs BPPRMPM1200 $ 299 

ProModem IBM-PC" card w/software BPPRMPMI200B S 289 

ProModem Apple II card w/sottware BPPRMPM1200A S 349 

PioMooem tx Matmto&n wcatte & software BPPRMPM1 2O0M S 399 

Alpha/num display to ProModem BPPflMDISPLAV S 79 

Optons processor tor ProModem BPPRM0PTPR0 S 79 

64K Memory exp tor Uptons processor SPPOBPRMEXP64 S 59 

DISK DRIVES 
8 "DRIVES 



NOW 
RX80 2015s 
RX80FT20IDS 
RXtOO 26lbs 
FX60 20lbs 
FX100 26lbs 
LQ1500 Set int 30cps 
LQ1500 Par mt 30cps 



EPSON 

SHIPPING NEW "+ SERIES" 

BPEPNRX80+ 
BPEPNRX80FT+ 
BPEPNRX100+ 
BPEPNFX80+ 
BPEPNFX100+ 
BPP0BEPNLQ1500S 
BPPDBEPNLO15O0P 



OKIDATA 



82A *, tractor teed 25 it 
B3A w/iracior teed 35 It 
84A ■ parallel 35 lbs 
B4A - serial 35 lbs 



J2A 



II 25 6 



92A - serial 25 lbs 
93A - parallel 35 lbs 
93A serial 35 lbs 



BPOKIDAT82AT 
BP0KIDATB3AT 
BPQKIDAT84AP 
BP0Kt0ATB4AS 
BPOKI0AT92AP 
BP0KIDAT92AS 
BP0KIDAT93AP 
BP0KIDAT93AS 



SIEMENS Single sde dM/densrty 18 lbs 8PSIEFOD1008 S 125 

2 to 5 Drives S 110 each/ 6 or more Dr rves S99 each 
WORLD DISK DRIVES Double S«e BPWDD2008P S 219 

dWdensity 18 lbs 2 to 5 Dnves $199 each 

6 or more Drives SI 89 each 
MITSUBISHI dbl Side dW dens 18lbs BPMITM289463B S 375 
TANDON '-? height sgt side, dbl dens 9lbs BPTNDTM8481E S 319 
TANDON V| height dW side dbl dens 9lbs 8PTNDTM8482E S 389 

5V«" DRIVES 

SHUGART 40trk ft height. d» side 3lbs BPSHUSA455 S 99 

SHUGARr 40 tm Vht dbl side 3lbs BPSHUSA465 S 99 

TANDON 100-2 40trk lull height BPTNDTM1002 S 149 
dbi side 4 lbs 

5V*" HARD DISK 

QUANTUM 42Mbyte Hard disk 9lbs 9PQTMQ540 S1395 

Seagate ST225 Vt high 25 Mbyte 5 lbs 
MAXTOR 85Mbyte 30ms access I2lbs 
MAXTOR 140Mbyte 30ms access I2lbs 
SHUGARTSA712 12 Mbyle 



BPSEAST225 
BPMXTXT1085 
BPMXTXT1140 
BPSHUSA712 



- , '"Double Sided Noshuo 

, oouble Density Diskettes ; Diskettes 

6 ■#, 00 EACH la B.XM ol 250 
■r 950 EACH in Cartons ot 10001 

mm w . T: 7u»«o-»«so.oo/e»rt»il .» ■» 30 mi 



S-100 CPU DOARDS 

ShiKiing weight on all S-100 boards 2!bs each 



5 238 

i m 

S 429 
S 399 
S 599 
St 249 
ST 199 



$ 349 
S 589 
S 895 
S 979 
S 469 
S 610 
S 699 
S 925 



BPGBTA039 
BPGBTA041 
BPSDS38095 



CompuPro CPU-Z 

CompuPro 8085/88 dual processor 

SOS SBC-300 4MHi 

SDS SBC-300 6MHi 

ADVANCED DIGITAL SuperSix w/tioppy 

controller, 128KRAM 

ADVANCED DIGITAL 4MH| SBC. 5'4' 

floppy controller 64 K RAM 

ADVANCED DIGITAL 4 MHz SBC. 8 BPADCSBC18 

floppy controller. 64 K RAM 

S-100 RAM DOARDS 



I I7f 

s m 

s 599 
£ 699 



BPADCSBC15 S 595 



CompuPro RAM23 / 64K 
CompuPro RAM 23 128K 
SDS EipandoRAM lll-'696 
SDS ExpanrJoRAM IV 
MACROTECH 1 Megabyte 
CompuPro RAM 22 256K 



BPGBTA316 
BP6BTA31 - 

BPSDS38097 



BPMACMAXM 
BPGBTA070 



s m 

s 599 
S 499 
S 825 

S2I95 
Si 199 



MANNESMANN TALLY 

Mri60L80crj« 21 lbs BPTALMT160L S 575 

MT1B0L t32 col 28 lbs BPTALMT180L S 799 

TOSHIDA 



S-100 RAM DISK DOARDS 



CompuPro M-Dtrve/H* 512K BPGBTA072 
SDS RAM dish 256K BPSDS38082 


S 595 
S 649 


S-100 I/O DOARDS 





BPTSHP1340S S 649 

BPTSHP1340P s M9 

BPTSHP1351P SI 299 

BPTSHA04003 S 195 

BPTSHA05002 S 995 



P1340 serial 30tbs 
Pi 340 parallel 30ibs 
P1351 parallel 35lbs 
Bidirectionl tractor tor P1351 6lbs 
Single bin cut sheet feeder 
lor P1351 I5lbs 

PRAOICAL PERIPHERALS 

64 K Microbutten serial) 2lbs 8PPRPMB1S64 S 249 

64K Mfcrobufter (parallel) 2lbs BPPRPMB1P64 S 249 

MicroBiiHer 11+ tor Apple lser& par) 2 ibsBPPRPMB2PLUSlo 5 189 



Vector Intertacer II 
CompuPro Intertacer 3 
CompuPro intertacer 4 
CompuPro System Support 1 
SOS 4 port Async serial 
SDS 8 port Async serial 
SDS 8 port 4-Async 4-sync 



BPVCTB0OGF2B S 259 
BPGBTA078 S 599 

BPGBTA080 
BP6BTA103 

BPSDS38D96 
BPSDS38093 
BPSDS38094 



S 349 
S 350 
S 449 
S 529 
$ 649 



S-100 CONTROLLER DOARDS 
FOR FLOPPY DISKS 



CompuPro D1SK1 DMA 

CompuPro DISK1A DMA 

SDS VersaFloppy II with CP/M 3 0'" 

I a special implemenialion by SDS) 

SDS VersaFloppy in 

with 5»" unbanhed CP/M 30" 
with 8" unbanked CP/M 3 0" 
with 5 V banked CP/M 3 0" 
with 8 banked CP/M 30" 



BPGBT54018 S 399 

BPGBTA0B4 S 549 

BPPDBVF2CPM3 S 299 

BPSDS38099 S 599 

BPPDBVF339145 S 749 

9PPDBVF339146 S 749 

BPPDBVF339147 S 749 

BPPDBVF339148 S 749 



FOR HARD DISK 



CompuPro DISK3 Seagate STS00 series BPGBTA087 S 559 

ADVANCED DIGITAL Seagate 500 BPADCHDCIOG15 S 399 

compatible 



DISK DRIVE ENCLOSURES 

8 ENCLOSURES 



ParaDynamics obai desklop 35tbs BPPDN2200D 

ParaDynamKis dual rac* mount 35ibs BPPDN2200R 

JMR Dual desktop 30lbs BPJMR2C8 

5V4" ENaOSURES 

JMR Single 5lbs BPJMRtC 

JMR Dual lull height 9bjs BPJMR2C5 

JMR Dual Ml haght w/miernal data BPJMR2C5C 
cabteata 

JMR Dual hall height vert mount 7tbs BPJMR2SV5 

JMR Srngle hard clrsk enclosure 1 Site BPJMRHDC51 

JMR Dual hard ftsk enctosure 20lbs BPJMRHDC52 



: m 
i 4- 
f 229 



O 

ol 



> 



I OI 

jmi 

Ia^\1 

1 Ol 
lo»i 



On) 

1 1 

O! 



MICRO COMPUTER ACCESSORIES 

See Page 290 For Details 



HPMCA4O0 



: " ■ 

5 11 



IM 
IllM K.(i " ii,i#ir.iti 



HPMCAtud S 30 

KEYTRONIO 

BPKEYKB515I SI'W 

itf'KFVKB'.isi m 5199 

\M t M '. lie HI J KI /Kli*.t4'I.JH S H'l 






PRIORITY cUd ELECTRONICS —^ 

9161 Deering Ave, Chatsworth, CA 91311-5887 



ORDER TOLL FREE (600) 420-5922 - CA, AK, HI CALLC8101 709-5111 

S.«r F52& 25PJ2IS!? l*T U ? V '^ Ma BAa Ch6CK MOney 0rder ' U S FundS 0NLY CA residents ***** ^ T ^ include MINIMUM 
SHIPPING & HANDLING of $3.00 for the first 3 lbs., plus 50e for each additional pound (30 « if within California) Orders over 70 lbs sent freight collect Justin 
case, include your phone number. Prices subject to change without notice. We will do cur best to maintain prices through April 1 985 Credit card orders will be 
charged appropriate freight We are not responsible for typographical errors. Sale prices are for prepaid orders only Inquiry 3 I 4 



ORDER TOLL FREE (600) 423-5922 - CA, AK, HI CALL (616) 709-51 1 1 



100 20 

Qty Qty 



SS DD 104/1D 

DS DD 104/2D 

SS SD 3740/1 

DS DD 3740/2D 



1 97 
2.66 
2,50 
3.18 



2 10 

2 82 

2 65 

3 36 



maxell 



Things 



Color Coded Labels 

(Pkg. of 20) 
Tyvek Envelopes ea. 
10 Disk Soft Box ea. 



Fast 
Delivery 



1.74 
2 29 
2.79 
3.07 



2.44 

2 95 

3 24 



51/4 8 

.25 .30 

.08 .12 



CALL 818-706-8602 

+ Credit For USA Direct Dial Call jl. 
With Any Disk Order. 

Disks 'n Things 

5505 Softwind Way *"* 

!,«_c_j Agoura Hills, CA 91301 ^5^ 



Free Price List Available 



SAVE! SAVE! SAVE! 



IBM PC 25% off 

256K, 1 Floppy Drive 
Disk Controller Keyboard 



WE CUSTOMIZE IBM PC SYSTEMS 



HERCULES COLOR CARD 
ASTSIXPACPLUSW/64K. 

PGS-MAX 12 

EPSON F X- 100 

0KIDATA92." ..390. 

IE AC 55B - Floppy Drive 129. 

MICRO SCIENCE 10MB 685. 

MICRO SCIENCE 20MB 1025. 

Call For Additional Prices 

5K Computers 

1000 Semoran Boulevard/Suite 505 
Winter Park, FL 32792 
1-800-432-8515 Ex 5118 
1-800-624-3250 Outside Florida 



ALL SYSTEMS ARE CONFIGURED 
AND TESTED AT NO EXTRA CHARGE 



Quelo " boUlJlJ Devel0 P men, 
\jyj\j*y\j Tools 

68000/68010 Assembler Package 

Assembler, tinker, object librarian and extensive indexed 
typeset manuals. 

Conforms to Motorola structured assembler, publication 
M68KMASM[4]. Macros, cross reference and superb toad 
map, 31 character symbols. 

Optimized for CP/M-80, -86, -68K, MS-DOS, PC DOS . . $595 
Portable Source written in "C" $1495 

Complete 68000 Development Package 
for MS-DOS 

Lattice 68000 "C" Compiler and 

Quelo 68000 Assembler Package $1095 

68200 Assembler Package 

Assembler and linker for Mostek MK68200. 

Optimized for CP/M-80, MS-DOS, PC-DOS $ 595 

For more information contact Quelo Inc. 

2464 33rd W. Suite #173 
Patrick Adams Seattle, WA 98199 

Phone (206) 285-2528 
COD. Visa, MasterCard telex II fTWX) 9103338171 

CP/M, TM DRI. MS-DOS TM Microsoft. PC-DOS TM IBM. 



Inquiry 120 



Inquiry 162 



Inquiry 329 



2050 $ 655 

3550 . . $1315 

8850 $1685 

2010/15/30 $ 625 

3510/15/30 $1185 

8810/15/30 $1625 

Elf 360,370 $ 399 

Pinwriter P-2 $ 490 

(w/lnterface & Tractor) 

Pinwriter P-3 $ 690 

(w/lnterface & Tractor) 

Terms: PREPAID - FREE FREIGHT!! 

QUALITY PRINTERS 
8415 Cement City R<± 
Brooklyn, Michigan 49230 
Phone:517-592-3749 



A^ 



Expanding the 
power of the 
computer . . . 

COMPUTER 
SOFTWARE -jr." 

A Scientific American Book 

Written by such leading authorities as ALAN KAY, 
NKLAUS WIRTH, and LAWRENCE TESLER. this col- 
lection of 10 articles from Scientific American 
undeniably shows that software is to the computer 
as the score is to the instruments of music. In- 
dividual chapters consider the question of the in- 
terface between the cerebral and the solid-state 
circuit that software supplies, while subsequent 
articles examine software's impact on linguistics, 
science and mathematics, information manage- 
ment, graphics, process control, and problem 
solving. Order your copy today. Paper, 124 pages. 
$Li 95 (plus SI. 50 for postage and handling). 
ISBN 7167-1712-3 

IS W. H. Freeman and Company 

-H19 West 1980 So., Salt Lake Citv, I IT 84l(>4 
(801)973-4660 



IN STOCK 

MODEMS 

All modems listed are Hayes 

compatible with Free 
Communications Software 

RACAL-VADIC MAXWELL 

300PC 300, PC Internal w/soft $ 219 

300 V 300, RS232C External $ 219 

1200 PC 300/1200, PC Internal w/soft $ 337 

1200 V 300/1200, RS232C External $369 

George Communications Software $ 79 

HAYES 1200 SMARTMODEM External $ 449 

U.S. ROBOTICS Password $ 305 

PROMETHEUS 

Promodem 1200 $ 334 

Options Processor . $ 79 

DIRECT CONNECT DEVICES 

P.O. Box 13256, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406 

CALL FOR ■■■■■ «JB CALL TO 

FREE VtSA | BB ORDER 

CATALOG MM: MM (805) 543-6308 

Dealer Inquiries Invited - Many Items Not Listed. 



inquiry 324 



Inquiry 398 



Inquiry 1!8 




DSDD-$1.39 

IBM PREFORMATTED (360K) $1.55 

QUALITY MEDIA'ANY QUANTITY 

LIFETIME REPLACEMENT 

GUARANTEE 

HUB RINGS-TYVEC ENVELOPES 

Because we buy in huge volume to 

supply software manufacturers, 

our prices can't be beat. 



4* 



BlACKSHIP 

COMPUTER SUPPLY 



PO Box 883362 • San Francisco, CA 94188 
(415)550-0512 

Add $3,00 shipping and handling 
(CA residents add 6.5% ) VISA/MC/COD 




EXSEk 

30 - 60% SAVINGS 

on 

Computers 

Word Processors 

Peripherals 



x 



|INC. 



OFFICE EQUIPMENT BROKERS 

800-624-2001 NY (716) 325-5530 




MAPIT 

MAPS ON YOUR PRINTER 

OUTLINE 

SHADED BY REGION 

INTERPOLATED CONTOURING 

TREND SURFACE 

MAP FILES FOR AMERICAS, 
ASIA, AFRICA & EUROPE 

FOR IBM PC & COMPATIBLES 

ONLY $95 

QSC BOX 778 

E. LANSING, Ml 48823 
(517) 641-4428 



Inquiry 45 



Inquiry 147 



Inquiry 330 



Contact us for other low prices on hardware and software. 

Next Day Air Extra 

ALL PRICES INCLUDE 
FREE SHIPPING IN USA. 



com pa* 



Call for latest prices. 



camPAa 



256K, 1/360K drive, 
10 Meg Internal 



UlTj $2995 




Functional equivalent 
to a Compaq Plus, 



Now using y/i " shock-mounted Winchester drives. 

The same as used in the Compaq Plus. 

Also available with 2 half-height drives and 10 MEG HD-iM 1 ) 1 *. 

Or upgrade your Compaq to a Compaq Plus'* equivalent with 
our V'i " shock-mounted Winchester disk kit. Includes Hard 
Disk. Controller. Cables, Manual, Software, and Mounting 
Hardware. One year warranty. Aaap 




TAPE BACKUP SYSTEM 

$595 



•Half Height • 10.35 Meg 

• Low Power Formatted Capacity 

• I'ses Floppy • Used in Compaq 
Controller Card Deskpro™ 



It simply works better. 



Functional equivalent to 
Compaq Deskpro ™ 
Model 4. 

$3895 



Includes Monitor 




XT™ POWER 135W 




Solve your power problem. 
Fully XT* compatible. 
One Year Warranty. 
Directly Replaces Power Supply in PC" 



$119 



640K, One 360K Drive, 
One 10 Meg Internal Hard Drive, 
Tape Backup Unit. 




Fully compatible w/IBM PC AT ' 
Disk Controller. DOS 3.0 or 3.1 

RAM SET FOR PC AT M 

$149 

20 MEG Internal Hard Disk 

$795 

53 MEG Internal Hard Disk 

$1195 



10, 20, 33 AND 42 MEG INTERNAL AND 
EXTERNAL HARD DISK SYSTEMS 



With Hard Disk by 



• • • Wk roscience 
• • International 

• • * Corporation < 




HalfHeight 

Same Hard Drive as used by 
Everex, Qubie' and Kamerman Labs. 



10 Meg Internal 

$549 





20 MEG 


33 MEG 


42 MEG 


Brand ol Hard DU 


— 


tod.mr 


«« 


Internal 


$695 


$1395 


$1595 


External 


$895 


$1495 


$1695 



With Hard Disk h\ 




Half Height 



Externals mounted with independent power supply and fan. Fully DOS 2,1 or i.O compatible. Both Internals and 
Externals bout from Han) Disk. J3 and *2 Meg Internal Disks include extender power supply. The system comes 
complete and ready to install with the Hard Disk. Controller. Cables, Manual. Software, and Mounting Hardware. 
One year warranty. 



Same Hard Drive as used by 
Maynard Electronics. 

10 Meg Internal 

$549 




TEAC 

4 55-B, Half-Height, DS/DD 

$109 



MITSUBISHI JA55l-2,Half-Heigh( DS/DD 



64KRAM $19 

S6t Of 9 Chips, 200 or ISO Nanoseconds 



Quantities of 
10-49 sets 



Quantities of 

SO- U9 sets 



Quantities of 
ISO sets or more 



(Japan's Best) 
Half-Height. DS/DD 

$99 



$99 

Same as Shugart SA-4SS 



$17 per set. $1 4 per set. $13p 



256K RAM 



Set of 9 chips 

$95 



Persyst Time Spectrum HARDWARE CDC 9409 or 

w/0K-$189 w/384K-$303 Tandon TM 100-2-$129 

Compaq 256K, 2 drive$-$2295 



AST SixPak Plus W/384K 1394 

AST SixPak w/64K 1259 

Hercules Color Card 1175 

Hercules Graphics Card w/Parallel 1349 

Paradise Modular Graphics Card 1295 

Paradise Module A Parallel Port I 69 

Paradise Module B64-156K 'Clock 1209 



Persyst Monochrome Card wl Parallel. 1171 

PGS HX 12 I4f9 

PCS MAX-12 .1179 

Epson CALL 

Juki 6100 • 1599 

Okldata 92/93/84 I369/*569/»"'19 

Ti 855 ■ » 7 «9 

Hayes Smartmodem 1200 *449 

Hayes Smartmodem 1200B 1 3&9 

Kcytromc 5151 Keyboard 1189 



dBase III— $349 



Copy II PC... 

Copywrite 

Disk Explorer . 

Zero Disk 

Prokey3.0.... 

Sideways 

Thinktank 



..$24 
.CALL 
.CALL 
.CALL 

..$89 
..$39 
.$119 



SOFTWARE 

BBORUVHr 
INTERMATIONAL 

Sidekick Svpwfcey Turbo Toolbox 

Non-Copy Protected Sidekick Turbo Tutor 

Turbo Pascal 2.0 or 3.0 Borland Gift Pack 

Turbo Pascal w '8087 2.0 or 3.0 Borland Gift Pack w 8087 

CALL FOR PRICES! 

(Our pricr> arr so low. they made us 
take them out of ihe id i 



Norton Utilities- 



Version 3.0, 
Dec. '84 Release 



-$59 



Wordstar 2000 $269 

Wordstar 2000+ $319 

Crosstalk XVI $119 

Multimate $269 

Lotus 1-2-3 $309 

Lotus Symphony $429 



*mm 



WF* 



Microscicnce International Corporation. 
Irw in Magnetics, TEAC, COMPAQ, 
Panasonic, Shugart, Mitsubishi. Qubie', 
OK I DATA, IBM, Kamerman Labs, Everex. 
Borland International, and Maynard 
Electronics are trademarks of their 
respective companies. All brands are 
registered trademarks. dBase III is a 
registered trademark of AshtonTate. 



PC'S LIMITED 



OUTSIDE TEXAS, ORDERS ONLY, CALL 1-800-IBM-5150 

7801 N. Lamar, #E-200, Austin, Texas 78752 

All calls inside Texas and all non-order inquiries, 

call (512) 452-0323 

Telex Ne. 9103808386 PC LTD 



No surcharge on VISA or MasterCard _ 

3% surcharge on American Express LJ 



Inquiry 300 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 463 



FoxBASE™ 

Interpreter/Compiler 



I dBASE IT source compatible 

I Runs 3-20 times faster than 

dBASE II 
I 8087 coprocessor support 
I 14 digit precision 
I Up to 48 fields per record 
I Full type-ahead capabilities 
I Provides compact object code 

and program security 
I Twice as many memory variables 

as dBASE II 



FOX SOFTWARE INC. 

13330 Bishop Road, P.O. Box 269. 
Bowling Green, OH 43402 
419-354-3981 



controls up ^^^ * x 
to 4 motors 
from any CRT, 

terminal or 
computer 




STEPPING 
MOTOR 
CONTROLLER 

• powerful 5 amps/ • acceleration 
winding deceleration 

• RS232 interface • 1-4 axis moves 
Standard Version with BASIC $985 
16K BASIC with Battery Backup $1335 
CNC VERSION $1950 
Stepping Motor Tips Cookbook $8 
CNC Manual $12 

CENTROID (814) 237-4535 
Box 739, State College, PA 16804 



Inquiry 1 57 



Inquiry 63 



NOW C HERE! 

CROSS SOFTWARE 
for the NS32000 



Also Available for IBM PC 
INCLUDES: 

* Cross Assembler * 
* Cross Linker * 

* Debugger * 

* N.S. ISE Support * 

* Librarian * 

* Pascal Cross Compiler * 

* C Cross Compiler * 

U.S. prices start at $500 



SOLUTIONWARE 

1283 Mt View-Alviso Rd. 

SuiteB 

Sunnyvale, Calif. 94089 

408/745-7818 * TLX 4994264 



inquiry 357 




8K Memory Modules 

$44.95 

For your Model 100 & NEC PC-8201 
Field proven and fully supported. 

TTXpress Model 1280 

Portable Thermal Printer $170 

Bat. opperated, 2.2 lbs, 8V 2 "paper, 40 cps 

Just for your NEC-8201 

The SideCar $199 

32K RAM cartridge/expandable to 128K 

FREE SHIPPING, HANDELING & INS. 
FOR CONT. USA. Orders shipped UPS 
next business day. 30-day satisfaction, 
money back guarantee. We accept Visa, 
IWC & Amer. Exp. Checks held 18 days. 

^COMPUTING (800)732-5012 

420 Constitution Ave. fM* 41 * 8 
Camarillo, CA 93010 i ,nua " r > 



SAVE TIME AND MONEY WITH 
LOW COST PI-SWITCH BOXES. 

f a g 

I j lf\ Starting at $59.95 L, I 

•Quickly shares your computer among 
multiple terminals, printers, moderns, etc. 
with just a flick of the wrist. 

•Compact black & beige aluminum 
enclosure features a high quality rotary 
switch with rear mounted connectors. 

•Serial RS-232 Models have fern. 25-Pin Conn. 
(Lines 1-7 & 20) 

PI-02-S switches 2 to 1 $59.95 

PI-03-S switches 3 to 1 79.95 

PI-05-S switches 5 to 1 109.95 

• Parallel models have fern. 36-Pin cent. conn. 

PI-02-P switches 2 to 1 94.95 

PI-04-P switches 4 to 1 . 154.95 

•Dealers, schools & custom inquiries welcome. 

•One Year Warrantee, COD, VISA, M/C. 

•Shipping UPS $200/ea. AIR $4 007ea 
Cflfj /"I 7301 NW 41 St. 
MIAMI, FL 33166 
(305) 592-6092 



GO FORTH, UNIX! 
. . . with u4th 

UNIX/XENIX/FORTH DEVELOPERS 

Are you interested in improving your software productiv- 
ity'' Do you have a UNIX system or engineering work 
station 9 Now you can realize the exceptional capability 
of moving your Forth applications to the world of UNIX 
and XENIX Experience the productivity enhancement of 
an interactive programming environment and still code 
in C when necessary Ubiquitous Systems announces u4th 
the first Forth completely tailored for UNIX u4tti is a fast 
direct -threaded Forth written in portable C yet capable 
of execution speeds comparable to many assembler 
Forths Great for Al research and delivery Some features 
are Access to UNIX utilities and calls / Ability to 
incorporate C primitives / Object-Oriented Forth included 
Binary License Xenix S395 00 Plexus S895 00 Call 
about others OEM's Special terms 

UBIQUITOUS SYSTEMS 

13333 Bel-Red Road N E Bellevue Wa 98005 



(206)641-8030 



9 00-noon Weekdays 

IJNIXiTMi AT&T XFNIXlTMl MICROSOFT 



inquiry 320 



Inquiry 340 



Inquiry 391 



8051 
SIMULATOR 

for the IBM-PC $400 

or Z80 CP/M uC ■ ** 

SIM51 is a screen oriented program that 
simulates the Intel 8051 family of single 
chip microcomputers. It accepts Intel .HEX 
files (produced by most cross assemblers) 
and features both a menu and a com- 
mand driven user interface. 
Call today for complete information. 

W@@to [Ic^QorjfpatfQfStJDQ 
©OG'porj'gfcm 

9560 Black Mountain Road 
San Diego, CA 92126 

For Immediate Action Call: 
(619) 566-1892 




Over 1 35.000 

GAS STATIONS 

Need Specialized 

Bookkeeping Software 

STATION 
MASTERED 

Complete integrated system with quick. 
easy data entry to automatically create 
daily accounting. Reports shift check- 
out. TBA. profit & margins. Has full 
inventory control, AK, Payroll, V 1.. 
many other features MS DOS & ( Y M 
versions, full) working demo available. 



s 



Small Business 
Computer Systems, I ne. 

313 Llewellyn Rd.. Ambler. PA 19002 215-542-9639 




Your 

floppy disk 

should be a 

BASF Flexydisk® 



DOUBLE DENSITY 
SOFT SECTOR 

BOXES OF TEN ONL 



3V 2 " 



SOLD IN BOXES OF FIVE ONLY 



$-|3? 
$359 



tremendous selection of software 
books, accessories and supplies 

UP TO 50% OFF' 



till.. 

Framework 349 

Home Acct. Plus 89 

■ w/Ultraflle t49 

ABOVE SOFTWARE AVAILABLE IN OTHER F< 



Software for IBM FC_ 

349 Multimate . 



Symphony 419 

Wordstar 2000 279 

Wordstar Pro Pac . . 249 



.L FOR AVAILABILITY 



Minimum shipping and handling 12 00 California residents add 6% sales lax. 
Prlc«S subjact to change without notice Write lor our free catalog 

ABC data products 

3317 ADAMS AVE. SAN DIEGO, CA 92118 

619-283-5488 O 800-854-1555 



Inquiry 186 



Inquiry 349 



Inquiry 8 



computers 

■ ■ ■ of New York ■ 

wholesale 



315676-3004 

Box 150 Brewerton # N.Y. 1S020 



Inquiry 92 



-PRINTERS 

ANADEX 

DP-9501B $1049 

DP-9620B 1099 

DP 9625B .1129 

DP 6500 2299 

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS 

TI855 w/Tract $839 

Tl 810RO Package Call 

C ITOH 

Prowriter8510APar $315 

Prowriter8510ASer 415 

Prowriter II Par 499 

Prowriterll Ser 549 

EPSON 

RX-80FT $329 

FX-100 589 

STAR M I CRONICS 

Gemini 10X. $259 

Gemini 15X 389 

Radix 15 Call 

MANNESMAN TALLEY 

MT 160 I .$529 

MT-160L 579 

MT-180L 829 

DIABLO 

620RO25CPS $879 

630RO40CPS 1705 

OK I DATA 

ML82A raW . Call 

ML-83A *^ r O a - Call 

ML 92 Par fP.V L <yH .Call 

ML-92Ser *Je^ , Call 

V1L92SA (APPLE).. V.. . c6 Sl . . Call 

ML-93Par.. (*! Call 

Pacemark 2350 Ser 1699 

PANASONIC 

KX P1090 $279 

KX-P1091 329 

NEC A/£lrV NEC 2050 979 

IBM 2050. $479 3530. . $1490 



3510. . 
3550. . 



1219 
1499 



8027. 



JUKI 

Daisywheel. 



359 



$409 



QUME 

Sprint 11/40 $1299 

Sprint 11/55. 1499 

Sprint 11/90 Call 

RITEMAN Inforunner . . . .$299 



Advertised prices reflect a cash discount on prepaid 
orders only. Most items are in stock for immediate 
delivery in factory sealed cartons with full factory 
warrantees. 



-MONITORS- 
AMDEK 

300 G (12 greenl 135 

300 A 112 amber) 145 

310 A (IBM PC) 165 

600 449 

BMC 

1 2 AU II 2" green) $79 

NEC 

JB-1201 (12 green) $155 

JB-1205 (12 amber) 155 

JC-1212 112" color! 339 

JC-1 216(12 RGB! 439 

PANASONIC 

12" Green Monochrome $139 

12" Amber Monochrome 149 

13" RGB 379 

PRINCETON 

SR12 625 

Scan Doubler 205 

SAKATA 

SG 1000 1 2 Green $105 

SG-100i2"Coior 269 

SG 200 12 RGB 539 

TAXAN 

KG 12N (12 green. $ " 

210 M3" COlOr, 2 " 

400 1 13" RGB color) 299 

410 113" RGB color) 379 

ZENITH 

Z- 122(1 2" amber! $99 

Z-123 112" green) . 89 

-HARD DISKS- 

CORVUS 

20M g. (IBM or Apple) $3035 

TALLGRASS 
TECHNOLOGIES 

20MB Hardfile Disk 

forlBM-PC 2395 

GroatJakes Call 

Teamate Call 

Turtx>10 % height Call 

-DISKETTES- 

Maxell 

5WMD1 $19.95 

5V4" MD2 . .24.95 

3M/Scotch 

5WSSDD $18.95 

5 1 /4" DSDD 22.95 

Educator 

Lifetime Warranty 

5V4"SSDD $14.95 

5V4"DSDD 16.95 

Flip 'n' File/hoids 50 Disks . . . . . .17.95 



-BOARDS- 
IBM PC BOARDS 

AST Sixpak plus 64k 299 

AST Megaplus 256k 569 

Microsoft 256k RAM Board ...299 
Plantronics Color + Board . . . .399 

Quadram New Quadboard Call 

Quadram Quadlink Board Call 

Tecmar 1st MATE Board 229 

Tecmar Graphics Master Board .569 
PC Peacock Graphics Board . . .299 
64k Chip Kit. . 2895 



-SYSTEMS- 
altos Call 

COLUMBIA 

VP Portable 256k $1869 

MPC 1600-1 Call 

MPC 1600-4 Call 

CROMEMCO Call 

IBM Call 

SOFTWARE 

Discount Prices on 

Most Popular 

Manufacturers/ 

MORROW 

NEW Pivot Call 

2 drives, 256K, Modem, LCD 

MD-3 $1927 

2 dnves, LQ Printer, MDT-70 Terminal 

NEC 

PC-8201 Portable Call 

PC-8800 Small Business System . . .1669 

PC-8800 16 Bit System 1999 

PC-8800 System w 8 in Drives. . . .2299 

NORTHSTAR 

Advantage .Call 

SANYO 

MBC 560-2... $949 

MBC 566-1 999 

MBC 566-2 .1139 

APPLE 

Apple ll-C w/1 drive, 228K*1035 

TELEVIDEO 

Tale-PC Call 

Tele-XT Call 

TPC-II Portable Call 

ZENITH 

1 51-22 w/2 Drives $2239 

151-52 w/Hard Disk 3599 

161-52 Portable . .2339 



-TERMINALS- 

ESPRIT SYSTEMS 

Esprit $475 

Esprit III (Detachable Keyboard). . .615 

New! 

Tele video Personal Terminal 

Personal Terminal $399 

Personal Terminal 529 

w 300 band modem 

Personal Terminal 849 

w, 1 200 band modem 

TELEVIDEO 

910 $439 

914 579 

924 695 

925 699 

950 865 

970/50. 949 

QUME 

102 GR. or Amb $429 

108 Gr. or Amb 509 

WYSE 

50 529 

300 Color. . 915 

ZENITH 

Z-29 $629 

ZT 10 Call 

ZT-11 Call 

-MODEMS- 
HAYES 

Smartmodem 300 $215 

Smartmodem 1200 ......... 479 

Smartmodem 1200B . 429 

Micromodem ll-E 249 

NOVATION 

D-Cat. $149 

J-Cat 109 

Apple Cat II 249 

103 Smart Cat 179 

Smart Caf+ 339 

103/21 2 Smart Cat 409 

212 Auto Cat 549 

Access 1-2-3 3 g g 

SIGNALMAN 

MkXIl 279 Volksmodem 69 

Mk VII... 129 MkIL 95 

U.S. ROBOTICS 

300 Baud Password $149 

1200 Baud Password 259 

PC 1 200 Baud Modem 329 

S 100 1200 Baud Modem 32 g 

NY. residents, add appropriate sales tax We ac 
cept VISA and Master Card. Personal and company 
checks, allow 2 weeks to clear. CO.D.'s require a 

25% deposit. All prices and offers mav be with- 
drawn without notice. 



restrict your right to copylneso^rfware yoiT\re^Rirchasedr 

I* U *C0 is designed to be what every collective organi- 
zation is: a means to protect the special interests of its 
members. 

And. in this case, the members are the victims... the 
people who own and use personal computers. 
The people who. until now, have been powerless. 
First of all, 
l*U*CO 
means low prices. 



'ujr^fsijjeTJ TrjrJBTjrt 
good about sharing information. 

Today, theyre not. 

In the last few weeks. I personally have learned: a) my 
Macintosh 512K Upgrade is defective and won't work with 
MacPaint under certain circumstances: b) the ROMS in my 
Anadex printer have been upgraded: c) the ROMS in my 
IOMEGA Bernoulli box have been upgraded; d) MicroPro 
eliminated the copy protection on my version of Wordstar 
2000 Plus; e) MicroPro had a bug in InfoStar for more than 
18 months... and didn't tell anyone 



i 

I International Union Ot Computer Owners. Inc. 

I Suite 4806 

I 30 East Huron Street 

I Chicago. Illinois 60611 

1 YES, I'm tired of being ripped off Enclosed is $1 00. Please 

J send me the information and enrollment package for ril'CO. 

J the International Union of Computer Owners 

1 I understand that I am under no obligation to enroll 
**" PLEASE PRINT ALL INFORMATION **** 



OK-WRITER 



LETTER QUALITY 

Enhancement for 

Okidata ML82A/83A 

Dot Matrix Printers 

• Easy to install 

• Plug-in module 

• Letter Quality: 30cps 

'*■■ _mr^z j * Dr a f t Quality: 120cps 

• 10, 12, 17 cpi 

• Full dot addressable graphics 

• Front panel access to all features 

• Proportional spacing, bold, double 
width, underlining, self-test, etc. 

• Serial and parallel interfaces retained 

• HELP mode; Diagnostic HEX dump 

• And many other features 




The Statistician 



CPM IBM-PC 
TRS-DOS XENIX 



Multiple Regression 

Stepwise 

Ridge 

All Subsets 

Backward Elimination 
Time Series Analysis 
Descriptive Statistics 
Transformations 



Survey Research 
Nonparametrics 
X-Y Plots 
ANOVA 

Random Samples 
Data Base 
Search & sort 
Hypothesis tests 

Please call TOLL FREE 



1-800-334-0854 (Ext. 814) 



-icmnnrp information _ 



Maxell Floppy Disks 

The Mini-Disks 
with maximum quality. 




Dealer inquiries 
invited CO.D's 
accepted. Call 
FREE (800) 235-4137. 



DUST 
COVERS 

For Personal Computers and Small 
Business Systems, Peripherals, Game 
Units - Protective, Long-Lasting Vinyl 
Resists Both Dust and Liquids 

-CHOICE OF COLORS- 



Amdek 


Franklin Ace 


Apple 


IBM 


Atari 


Kaypro 


BMC 


Okidata 


Columbia 


Rana Systems 


Commodore 


Star Micronics 


Corona 


Televideo 


Eagle 


Texas Instruments 


Epson 


PLUS OTHERS 



GROUP/VOLUME DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE 

FOR FREE BROCHURE WRITE: 

ENCHANTED FOREST 

P.O. Box 5261 , Newport Beach, CA 92662 

(118 Onyx) 

Dealer Inquiries Invited 



Inquiry 141 



BLUE BOOK 

Prices shown for thousands 
of computers, software, and 
peripherals. 

Each listing includes sug- 
gested list, avg. retail, whole- 
sale, and used prices for all the 
geographical regions of the 
United States. 

Send $12.95 + $.50 postage to: 

NCDA 

National Computer Dealers Association 

5420 Hwy. 6 North 
Houston, Texas 77084 



Inquiry 74 



maxell disks 

LIFETIME WARRANTY 



Think you're getting the best price 
on Maxell Diskettes? 
You're right . . . BUT ONLY IF . . . 
You're buying from 
NORTH HILLS CORP. 
We will beat any nationally adver- 
tised price* or give you a 15 disk 
library case FREE! 

Call us last— TOLL FREE— for our 
best shot every time. 

1-800-328-3472 
Formatted and hard sectored disks in 
stock. 



DATA ACQUISITION TO 00 

INTERFACE FOR ANY COMPUTER 




Connects via RS-232. Built-in BASIC. 
Stand alone capability. Expandable. 
Battery Option. Basic system: 16 ch. 
12 bit A/D, 2 ch. D/A, 32 bit Digital I/O. 
Expansion boards available. Direct 
Bus units tor many computers. 

SPECIALISTS IN PORTABLE APPLICATIONS 

(201) 299-1615 

P.O. Box 246, Morris Plains, NJ 07950 



ELEXOR 



Inquiry 140 



\ferbatim 

flexible disks 

Call Free (800) 235-4137 for 

prices and information. Dealer 
inquiries invited. CO.D. and 
charge cards accepted. 




VtSA 



PACIFIC 
EXCHANGES 

100 Foothill Blvd. 
San Luis Obispo, CA 
93401. InCaL call 
(800) 592-5935 or 
(805) 543-1037. 



Inquiry 296 






PRINTER RIB 

PRICE 

ANADEX 9500 

APPLE DMP 

BROTHER HR-15/25 MS 

C. !T0H PROWRITER 

COMMODORE MPS-801 


B0NS j 

PER PER 
RIBBON DOZEN 
... 10.50 109.80 

... 5.50 58.80 
... 5.95 68.40 
... 5.50 58.80 
... 8.00 90.00 
... 5.00 48.00 
... 6.95 75.00 
... 9.75 111.00 
... 2.50 23.40 
.. 15.75 180.00 
... 5.75 58.80 
... 6.25 69.00 
... 9.00 96.00 
... 5.50 58.80 
... 2.50 23.40 
... 7.50 87.00 
... 5.75 58.80 
... 8.50 96.00 


EPSON MX-FX 70/80 

EPSON MX-FX 100 

EPSON LQ-1500 


GEMINI 10-10X-15-15X ... 


IBM/IDS 4-C0L0R 


IDS M1CROPRISM-480 


NEC -3500 M/S Non Flip 

NEC -3500 NYLON 

NEC - 8023A 

OKIDATA 80/82/83/92 

RADIO SHACK DMP-2100 ...... 

RADIO SHACK LP VI & VIII 
RITEMAN 



DATA ACQUISITION 

and control for ANY computer 



The Model 1232 communicates via RS-232, 
and has 8 analog inputs ( ± 4 VDC; 12 bits), 
8 digital inputs and outputs, and a 2000 
point buffer. Suitable for field data logging 
or lab use, the 1232 costs only $690. The 
8-bit system (0-5 VDC) is $490. Detailed 
manual, $6. Phone our applications 
engineer at 617-899-8629 or write: 



m * STARBUCK w w 

^ "T" DATA COMPANY T^ T 



225 Crescent St., Waltham, MA 02154 



Inquiry 366 



ffSKSSU- 

...„„ nl .nuB0« '".-. 6 l 



&W*tD*v»~- CTC . 

»« iiTTLE B0 fcRD Lim supports tour 

.SYSTEM SUPP °"l ors & cables - s99 

mom •i 3 " ,M __- aim 



Inquiry 121 



f C SOFTWARE 1 

DEVELOPMENT 
PCDOS/MSDOS 

• FULL C COMPILER PER KS.R 

• Inline 8087 or Assembler 
Floating Point 

• Full 1 MB Addressing for 
Code or Data 

• Transcendentol Functions 

• MSDOS 1 .1/2.0 LIBRARY SUPPORT 

• Program Chaining using Exec 

• Environment Available to Main 

• c-window™ C SOURCE CODE 
DEBUGGER 



6 A* 



AEMVNCED 
COMPUTER 



A9 ttoO 



Pfi* 



1985 

MAIL ORDER PRICING ONLY 



NOW LIQUIDATING GAVILAN COMPUTER 
CALL FOR GAVILAN 8/16 LINE COMPUTERS! 
See Below • GAVILAN SPECIALS 



APPLE COMPATIBLE PERIPHERALS 



ALS CP/M 3 PLUS CARD $3 

COEX 16K RAM CARD SALE 

COEX PAH PRINTER CARD w/CABLE 
COEX 80 COL EXT 64K CARD SALE 
IS PKASO I/O (11.110) » 

KENNStNGTON SYSTEM SAVER 
KENNS1NGTON PC SAVER 
KRAFT JOYSTICK 

MCT SPEED DEMON 2 

MICROSOFT Z-80 SOFTCARD 2 

GRAPPLER PLUS I 



FARADAY IBM PO 

I Board « 64K MS DOS Comp.t.bi* 
$349 95 



AST COM90PLUS MK $199 00 

SIGMA MAXIhNZER 64K 249 95 

SIGMA CHSK CONTROLLER 169 95 

HARD DISK CONTROLLER 249 95 

10 Mb INTERNAL HARD DISK 6*5 00 

10 Mb EXTERNAL HARD DISK 669 00 

15 Mb INTERNAL HARD DISK 849 00 

15 Mb EXTERNAL HARD DISK 1049 00 

80 WATT BOOSTER SUPPLY 149 95 

130 WATT IBM SUPPLY 159 95 

PC COMPATIBLE KEYBOARD 99 00 

IBM PC CHASSIS 129 95 

PLANTRONICS COLORPLUS' 389.95 

10 Mb INT TAPE STREAMER 1150 00 

PERSYST MONO CARD 199 00 

PARADISE MONO/COLOR 409 95 

HERCULES MONO CARD 369 00 



BROTHER HR 1 5P/S ( 1 3ep») SALE 
BROTHER HR 25P/S (23cpe-l SALE 
BROTHER HR 35P/S (36cpai 
NEW! BROTHER M2024 |24pml 
COEX 80F/T (BOcpal SALE 

EPSON RX80/80FT |1 QQeea) SAVE 
EPSON MX 80FT ISOcosi SAVE 

EPSON FX80 (160cp»l SAVE 

EPSON FX 100 (tOOcpsi SAVE 

MACINTOSH w Ik: SERIAL I/O 
OWDATA 92P 1180c©*) SALE 

OKIDATA 93P |160ci») 
OKIDATA 84P i2O0cpsp 
OKIDATA 2350P OSOcpsI 
TOSHIBA P1351 124pm] 
STAR GEMINI 10X (120«») 
STAR GEMINI 10XPC 
STAR GEMINI 15X 
STAR GEMINI 15XPC 
SPECIAL STAR STX 80 THERMAL 
NEC 8027A PORTABLE PRINTER 
PANASONIC 1091 SALE 



150 00 
150 00 
150 00 
11500 
399 95 
61995 
775 00 
895 00 
295 00 
269 00 
328 00 
379 00 
449 00 
129 00 
36995 
359 00 



AMDEK 300G IGREEN) ST 39 95 

AMDEK 30OA | AMBER) 149.95 

AMDEK 310A (IBM AMBER) 169 95 

CALL FOR COLOR I • NEW MODELS 

PGS HX-12 (IBM COLOR) 469 95 

PGS SR 1 2 (HIRES) 599 95 

PGS MAX 12 'IBM GREEN. 198 95 

PGS OOUBLER BOARD 227 00 

TAXAN 420 (HI RES IBM' 399 00 

ZENITH 122A/123G 89 95 

ZENITH ZVM13U135 CM 

SANYO 6500 (MEDRES I 279 00 

SANYO 7500 (HI-RESi 379 00 
SANYOILOOKALIKEM2 AMBER SALE 74 95 



BIZCOMP PC INTELLIMOOEM IINT) $349 95 
HAYES SMARTMODEM 1200 (EXT) 469 95 

HAYES SMARTMODEM 1 20OB IINTl 399 95 

HAYES SMARTMODEM 300 (EXT) 209 95 

MICROMOOEM APPLE ll« 24995 

PROMETHEUS 1200M (MACINTOSH) 469 95 
PROMETHEUS 1200 (PC EXT) 359.95 

NOVATION ACCESS 12-3 38995 

CAT COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM 41995 

APPLE COMP LOW COST MODEM (300|49 95 



SEAGATE ST506 5Mb 
SEAGATE ST419 1 15Mb| 
SEAGATE (10Mb) ST2 12 
CMI 10, 15. 22Mb 
ROOIME 10 15 22Mb 
SHUGART SA604 [5Mbi 
SYQUEST REMOVEABLE 

CALL FOR QUOTE ON HIGHER 
CAPACITY HARD DRIVES' 



$269 00 
449 00 

449 00 



SUPER SAVER 

SHUGART SA604 HARD 

5Mb S149 D 95 



TEAC 55B 

MITSUBISHI 4851 
SHUGART 455 
TANOON TM100-2 

B" DISK DRIVES 
SHUGART 801 R 
SIEMENS FDD1006 
SIEMENS FDD200 8 DS/OO 
MITS M2894 
MITS M2896 v,Ht 
TANDON 848E "jHt 
OUME 242 v,m 



$129 95 
149 95 

12495 
169 95 

$269 95 
129.95 
195 00 
439 95 



1111 I II MM 

5* CASE POWER SUPPLY $69 95 

Bit' DUAL M HI w/POWER SUPPLY 79 95 

B DUAL CASE */POWER SUPPLY 279 95 

8 THINUNE DUAL w.-POWER SUPPLY 199 95 
5V4 HARD DiSK w/POWER SUPPLY 199 95 
BM II HIGH HARD OtSK 199 95 

APPLE ll/lle COMPATIBLE $1 74 95 

APPLE ll/lle COMPATIBLE V, HIGH 184 95 

MICROSCI APPLE lie DRIVE 219 95 

APPLE II to APPLE He ADAPTOR 19 95 



BUFFERED GRAPPLER $189 Si 

GRAPPLER SUPER SERIAL SALE $119 Si 

VIDEO T RGB He I/O 189 9) 

APPLE lie SERIAL CABLE 36 9i 

APPLE lie KEYBOARD 49 9i 

APPLE ll/lle POWER SUPPLY 59 9i 

APPLE ll/lle DISK CONTROLLER 49 91 

APPLE ll/lle COOLING FAN SYSTEM 49 9i 

STREET ECHO II SPEECH SYSTEM 99 91 

TITAN ACCELERATOR II CARD 449 9i 
WIZARD 80 COLUMN CARO SALE 99 01 



ROCKWELL AIM 

•502 Single Board Computer 

$249.00 



KEYTRONIC 5150/5! '58 00*199 00 

MOUSE SYSTEMS MOUSE W/SW 149 95 

QUADBOARO W/64K 263 00 

TECMAR GRAPHICS MASTER 545 00 

TECMAR CAPTAIN 64K 319 00 

CURTIS PC PEDESTAL 39 00 

PGS or QUADCHROME ADAPTOR 9 00 

TILT and SWIVEL STAND 

SYSTEM STAND 

EXTENSION CABLE IBM MONO 

KEYBOAHD EXTENSION CABLE 

SURGE SURPRESSORS 

DIAMOND (LEMON) 

EMERALD (LIMEI 

SAPPHIRE (PEACHI 

RUBY (ORANGE- 69 00 

COEX 384K MULTICARD w/OK 199 00 

WWiMlimM 

64K STATIC RAMCARD $199 95 



ALL NEW WITH DOCUMENTATION 

• TUART BOARD SALE 99 95 

• FRONT PANEL BO (IMSAli SALE 79 95 

• 8080 MPU BOARD SALE 49 95 

• 8 FLOPPY CONTROLLER iMorrow) 149 95 

• S-100 EXTENDER CARD 24 95 

01uF DISC BYPASS CAPACITOR 100/S5 50 
1 uf DISC BYPASS CAPACITOR 100/6 50 

OluF MONOLITHIC CAPACITOR 100/11 25 



l.:TJfMMOI;Wi.][»HI*l 



21 00 
21 00 



39 00 
49 00 
59 00 



PN2222A 

PN2369A 

PN918 

2N2218A 

2N2219A 

2N2905 

2N2907 

;,., ;,;,.,. 

2N3S85 
2N3638 
2N3772 



/$T 00 
5/1 00 


3/1 00 


45 


45 


45 


u 


as 


4/1 00 


4/t 00 



2N3906 
TIP29A 
TIP30A 
TIP31A 
TIP32A 
1N4148 
1N751 
1N40O2 
1N4004 
MPQ2232 



11/1 00 
2/1 00 
2/1 00 
2/1 25 
2/1 25 

25/1 00 
5/1 00 

12/1 00 

1 0/1 00 
1 49 



GHHEjTHEEa 




fmoEmssBOM 







DB25S 'Female 
DB25P (Mal«i 

Hood$t 26 
DE37S (Female) 
DE37P (Matel 

Hood$1 75 
0050S (Fwnalel 
DD50P (Male) 

Hood S3 25 
(OTHER STYLES IN CATALOG) 
CENTRONICS 
IDC 36 Pin Male 
IDC 36 Pm Female 
Solder 36 Pin Male 
Solder 36 Pin Female 

(CALL TOLL FREE FOR IDCi) 



1 24 

$3 10 J 
240 
K'l H .'. > N 

$5 95 3 
525 
Mt B H/W $ 99 

$8 95 i 
600 
Mt H/W $ 99 



MACHINED 

HIGH 

RELIABILITY 

SOCKET 

SALE 

CALL FOR 
SPECIAL 
RATES 




199 

SPtnST/LP $ 13 $ 

14 Pm ST /LP 15 

16 Pin ST/LP 17 

1 6 Pm ST/LP 20 

20 Pin ST/LP 26 

22 Pm ST/LP 29 

24 Pm ST/LP 29 

28 Pm ST/LP 39 

36 Pm ST/LP 45 

40 Pm ST/LP 48 

64 Pm ST/LP 3 95 

(GOLD) 1-#i 

8 Pm WW/3L S 49 $ 

1 4 Pm WW/3L 62 

16 Pm WW/3L 65 

18 Pm WW/3L 88 

20 Pm WW/3L 99 

22 Pm WW/3L 1 19 

24 Ptn WW/3L 1 25 

2B Pm WW/3L 1 49 

40 Pin WW/3L 1 88 

TEXTOOUZIF ZERO INSERTION 

m $6 75 24 Pin $7 85 28 Pin S 

|We Stock All Types ol Sockets) 




6502 $4 50 I 6504 $6 75 
6502A 6 90 6507 9 75 

6502B 9 50 I 6520 4 25 



8035 


S 5 75 


6214 


$3 76 


8259 


8039 


5 75 


8216 




B271 


808OA 


295 


8224 


220 


8275 


8085A 


490 


8226 


1 95 


8279 


aocasA 


985 


S22B 


3 40 


8282 


BMB 


24 50 


8237 


14 75 


8283 


8087 


129 95 


8237 5 


1895 


8284 


8088 


29 50 


8238 


4 25 


8286 


- m 


88 95 


8243 


395 


6287 


ttm 


6 75 


8250 


10 50 


8288 


tut 


6 75 


8251 


4 25 


8289 


BUI 


26 95 


6251A 


695 


8292 


BOOS 


23 95 


8253 


6 75 


8741 


S2C- 


37 95 


6255 


4 25 


8748 


fl?C- 


3 25 


8255A 


6 95 


8749 


88 ' 1 


T 95 


6257 


6 75 


87SSA 



6522 $6 75 
6532 950 

6551 11 50 



$ 6 75 



26 95 
8 75 

a as 

- .:•: 
$.60 
941 
• W 
- 4 BE 

44 95 

IS N 

27 95 

.- • 




lM«.M?HiMHd:« 



UPD765S24 95 
1771 1595 

1791 24 75 
1 783 26 50 
1795 26 50 



HM*KHiHWSa 



8275 $28 50 I 
7220 39 95 
5027 17 95 
5037 21 95 I 
NEC7220 Grapruc! 



HaH 


!M:WWM< ., ^mm 


$3 95 
3 95 
6 75 


2350 

8250 
1 M6 4 02 


I 8 95 1 IM6403 
7 75 1 2651 


^■H 



1602B 

i o i u 

101 '.A 



1702 |1mSI 
2706 (450nS) 
2758 (5VI 
2716[4S0nS) 
2716 (350nS) 
2516i5V) 
TMS27t6 
TMS2532 
2732 (450nS) 
2732 (2S0nS) 
2732 l200nS) 



$3 80 


2732A-4 (450nS) 


$8 50 


3 65 


2732A (250nS) 


8 95 


B BO 


2732A-2 (20OnS) 


i 2 BO 




2764 <450nS> 




6.90 


2764 )250nS| 


,' BQ 


5 SO 


2764 (200nS) 




r-JO 


TMS2564 |45CnS) 


12 95 


B.6C 


MCM68764 |450r>Sl 34 95 


4.0s 


MCM68766 l3S0nS 


39 95 


8 25 


27128 3{3O0f»S) 


21 50 


10 95 


27138 i260nSi 


23 ■ 




27C32 


$16 95 


$1295 


27C84 


18 95 



2101 (450nS| S2 29 
21L02 |450nS) .ft 

2102 1 l450nS) /• 
21L02 2(2SOnS> 

2111 (450nS) 

2112 (450iiS) 
2114|4SOnS) 
2114L-4(450n) 
21UL-3(300n) 1 79 8/1330 
21 14L-2 (200n) 189 8/13 90 
2147(56f>S) 4 50 
4044 4 (450rvS) 3 25 
4044-3 (300nS) 3 75 
4044-2 (200nS) 4 35 
UPD410(t00nS| 3 75 
5101 ICMOSI 3 50 



.- n 

2 75 
1 45 8/9 50 
1 69 8/12 50 



MK4118 S4 85 

TMM2016 2 (200nS)4 10 
TMM201615 (150n)4 95 
TMM2016-1 (lOOnSie 10 
HM6116P4 |200nS)4 75 
HM6H6P3 <150nS(495 
HM6116P-2 O20nS)8 85 
HM6116LP-4 (LP) 5 90 
HM6tt6LP-3(LP! 6 75 
HM6116LP-2ILP) 9 95 
28132 (300nS) 32 95 
HM6264P-1S (150)32 95 
HM8264LP-1S(LP)36 85 
74S1B9(35nS) 185 

93415 iSOnS) 3 95 

93425 I50nS) 3 95 



I'.-iiMi'iUiir. 



iza 



4027 (250nS) $1 29 

1 103 (300nS) 79 

4U6N2H50nS) 180 8il395 
4116N-3(2O0nSI 165 8/12 50 
4H6N-4 [250nS) 1 45 8/10 50 
4 1 64N 1 50 i 1 50n) 5 95 9729 95 
4164N-200 (2O0n)4 95 9/24 95 
4164N-120(120nSi 8 49 

TMS4164(150nSl 5 95 



TMS4418(150nS) 
41256-150 {150n) 
41256-200 (200n) 
TMS4050 |300nS) 
TMS4060 |300nS) 
MM52B0 (3COnS) 
UPD411 |3O0nS) 
MM5298 l250nS) 



GAVILAN SPECIALS 



8 or 16 LINE COMPUTERS 

16 UNE BY 80 LCD DISPLAY 

8 LINE BY 80 LCD DISPLAY 

THERMAL PRINTER MECHANISM 

GAVILAN/1BM KEYBOARDS 

8V, k 1 1 THERMAL PAPER 1500 Shti 

PASCAL SOFTWARE w/MANUAL 

12V NiCAD BATTERY PACK 

20 MHJ CRYSTAL OSCILLATOR 



$79 95 
39 95 
24 95 

14 95 
299 
99 00 



SUPER SAVER 

IBM PC 

Comp DS/DO Disk Drive 



$ 89 9 



HI-TECH SPECIALS 

AMD7910 

300 BAUD MODEM IC 



$ 29 9 



l-r.Wl.H'lHHH.'l 



AOC0600$14 96 
AOC0804 3A5 
DAC0806 1 90 
4 45 
- H 



A0CO817 $9 76 
0AC0800 4 75 
DAC06O8 2 85 
DAC1020 7 95 
DAC1022 5 85 
LF363N 1 99 



1408L6 Si 95 
1406L6 285 
DAC100 7 95 
0AC08 7 95 

DAO01 6 95 

LF13201N 1 99 



S'A" DISKETTES 

VERBATIM 625-01 SSAJI 
VERBATIM 550-01 DS« 
MAXELL MD 1 SS/DD 
MAXELL MO 2 OS/DO 
DYSAN 104/ ID SS/DD 
DYSAN 104/2D DS/DD 
GENERIC SS/SS 
GENERIC DS/DO 
3V, DISKETTES (MAC, etc) 
V', HEAD CLEANING KIT 
8' HEAD CLEANING KIT 
DYMEC IBM PC DIAGNOSTIC 
APPLE II DIAGNOSTIC DISK 
MACINTOSH DISKETTE HOLDER 
BM DISKETTE HOLDER ISO) 




M5rai ?LH r . i ?r, i j *t » nT» 

64K UPGRADE s 4 9>$24.95 

256K RAMS<256Kxi, $15.95 

rcynfiRHWi'iiiw 



IBM PARALLEL iSnieidedl 
IBM SERIAL (Sntekiem 
KEYBOARO EXTENSION 
RS232 GENOER CHANGER 
RS?32 GENDER CHANGER 
NULL MODEM AOAPTOR 



FemaieFemate 



S29 95 
24 95 

•4 -,- 



SPECIALS OF THE MONTH 



8087 - 80287 SALE Call 
AB PRINTER SWITCHBOX (Parallel) $69.95 

TELEDATA MODEM VIC 20/64 42.95 

APPLE He KEYBOARD 49.95 

IBM COMPATIBLE KEYBOARD 99.95 

POTTER POWERUNE MODULE 5.99 
CALL FOR DEC RAINBOW BLOW-OUT 

NEC8201 PORTABLE 369 95 

NEC8027 PORTABLE PRINTER 369.95 

ZENITH Z151PC COMPUTERSALE 1 995 00 

IBM PC. 256K 2 w/DRIVES 1795 00 

IBM PORTABLE 1850.00 

COMPAQ PORTABLE 2195.00 




4000$ 


n 


4028$ 65 


4059 $7 90 


4001 


B4 


4029 


n 


4060 


88 


4002 


24 


40 n 


BB 


40M 


SB 


400S 


re 


4031 


3.M 




28 


.: ;..)■ 


2S 


40 --. 


i is 


4 170 


30 


4001 


BS 


40 M 


1 91 


4071 


28 


4009 


N 


403S 


n 


40/: 


M 


4010 


H 


4037 


| BO 


4073 


u 


401 ' 


24 


4041 


ft 


4071 


.-.8 


4019 


24 


404 | 


■ ■ 


4 •- 


n 


401 


3& 


404 


BB 


4077 


H 


4 M 


75 


404 ■ 


s^ 


4078 


36 


491Q 


N 


4 44 


-.:■> 


4 B1 


m 


BOH 


m 


404* 


60 


40BS 


18 


4017 


as 


.-. 41 


•a 


408S 


M 


401 B 


m 


4041 


BB 


4 --r 


95 


•OM 


m 


: 4. 


J5 


4 BB 


4^ 


■; 


m 


40QC 


34 


4094 


2.8C 


4oa ■ 


BB 


4081 


'5 


-: M 


■ N 


4003 


BB 


4 -. 


n 


4^9 


i 81 


4023 


BB 


4 ■' - 


7? 


1001 


BB 


4024 










BB 


«oee 












4027 


■>- 






CALL 


FQS ! 



4601 
4908 

4'-. . ■• 

4808 

4' (0 

4511 
4512 

4'. 14 

4018 

4^ 18 

4918 
4880 



4988 
BOOM 

80C97 

MC14408 
MC14*09 
MCI 4410 
MC14411 

MC14412 
MC14419 



74SO0$35 

74502 35 

74503 36 

74504 45 

74505 45 
74S08 39 



mv 



74S15 35 

74S20 35 

74S22 35 

74S30 35 

74S32 45 

74S38 89 

74540 39 

74SS1 35 

74564 39 

74565 39 



74S158 $99 

745160 2 49 

745161 I 89 

745174 t 19 

745175 1 18 
74S168' 1 49 

745194 1 48 

745195 1 49 

745196 1 49 

745240 1 88 

745241 1 89 

745242 1 99 

745243 1 99 

745244 1 99 
74S251 1 19 
74S253 1 19 

745257 1 19 

745258 i 19 
CALL FOR 74HC 



74S74 $55 


74S85 


BB 


7*386 


55 


74SH2 


56 


74S113 


BB 


74S114 


B8 


74SI242 69 


74S1321 39 


74S133 


4s 


74S134 


5(1 


74S135 


88 


74S136 


c< 


74S138 


BO 


74S138 


88 


74ST40 


58 


74S151 


BB 


74S153 


w 


74S157 


99 



74S260I 
74S2S0 
74S287' 

74S286* 
74S373 
74S374 
74S387* 
74S47 1 ' 
74S472' 
74S473" 
74S474 ' 
74S475- 
74S670- 
74SS71- 
74S572* 
74S673- 
74S940 
74S94t 



74C00B 35 | 74C74 $65 I 74C161 $1 13 I 74C373S2 35 
74C02 35 74C85 1 89 74C175 1 15 74C374 2 35 
74C04 29 74C90 115 74C240 1 89 74C901 69 



800-854-8230 

TWX 

910-595-1565 



Order: P.O. Box 17329 Irvine. CA 92713 
: 13108 E. Edinger. Santa Ana, CA 92705 
(714) 558-8813 



and Comtun r PO 5 We Oo noi tfuiflf you' u 
i checks requiff dnvws license and credil cvd 
wVKAotllilC :10O sow $500 require 20*. <1 
, snipping And handling tot UPS We diet s* 



Inquiry 12 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 469 




Monitor Mover 
Gives Back the Desk 




• Models to fit most CRTs 

• Rotates 360° on base 

• Adjustable height 

• Support tray swivels and tilts 

• Holds up to 50 lbs 

• Clamp, screw and wall mountings 

LirUfeklllli 

P.O. Box 8056 

Grand Rapids, Ml 49508 

(616) 241-4040 



AFFORDABLE M- 68000 
COMPUTER SYSTEM 




M68KCPU6 10 MHz CPG, 20K static RAM. 1 6K 
EPROM, on board monitor, two KS ISZ 

serial ports, 1 6-bit parallel port, 5 timen- 
counters expansion bus. 

Bare board 8 99.93 

Complete Kit (595. OO 

MD512K I28-512K static RAM, floppy disk controller 

& hard disk interface Bare board » 99.95 

Complete Kit(128K) 9725. OO 

M68KE Enclosure with power supply, fan, filter. 4 slot 
card cage 

9249. OO 

M68KASM M68000 Macro Cross Assembler (or CP M80. 
IBM PC. TRS-80 and Apple II computers 

9199.00 

UPS shipping & handling 9 4.00 

COD orders add 9 3.00 

Foreign orders add 920.00 

California residents add 6.5 " tax 

Cltif C Educational 

tl^lO Microcomputer (714)854-8545 

Sytemi 

P.O. Box 161 15 « Irvine, CA 927 1 3 



$99 SINGLE BOARD 
COMPUTER / CONTROLLER 




MODEL MCG-85 FEATURES 



8085A CPU 

2K System Monitor ROM 

256 Bytes of RAM 

RS232 Port 

Parallel & Serial I/O 

* Two 8 Bit Prog Ports 

* One 6 Bit Prog Port 
4% x 6ft PCB 



- Automatic Baud Rate 

- 5 Interrupts 

■ 14 Bit Counter/Timer 

- Onboard Prototyping 

- 6.144 MHz Crystal 

• Onboard Expansion 
* 4K ROM &/or 
' 4K RAM or CMOS RAM 



STOCK. $99 KIT. $135 ASSEMBLED & TESTED. 

A D, Parallel I/O, Memory & Mother Cards Avail. 

STD Product Line a/so available 

Visa, M.C., Amex & COD. Add $5.00 Shipping 

CUSTOM DESIGNS & DEVELOPMENT 

OUR SPECIALTY 

SYNALTA SYSTEMS 

31-14 Broadway 

Astoria, New York 11106 

(718) 728-6700 



Inquiry 236 



Inquiry 136 



Inquiry 375 



Osborne 



As available only! 


Very limited quantity. 


Important 
Always call to 
check availa- 
bility before 
order ing. 


To fix yourself, 
or for parts. 
Complete, but 
known not 
wor king. 


Guaranteed for 30 
days. May be new 
or refurb., depen 
ding on avail. 
Exch' Outr.ght 
Repair 


Main Board OS-1 


$49 


$79 


$159 


Mam Board Exec. 


S159 


$139 


$299 


Exec. Memory Card 




$39 


$89 


Double Density Kit ** 






$79 


5" CRT (Grn/White) 


S9.95 


$19 


$29 


7' CRT I Amber 1 


S19 


$49 


$99 


15" CRT, no case 


— 




S85 


Drive Analog Card 


S9 95 


$29 


S59 


Drive Mechanism 


S19 


$25 


$59 


Power Supply 


$4.95 I $24 


$29 


Keyboard (No enclosJ 


S19 { 


$99 



Includes board, cable, documentation 
Shipping charged on all ordtii 

Computer Parts Mart 415-493-5930 
3200 Park Blvd * Palo Alto * CA 94306 



TCEMTfch 
PREMIUM COLOR 
DISKETTES 

LOWEST PRICE EVER 



ncm*reYf,iiiir.vii 

SSDD 

$165 



1 



5-1/4" 

OTY 20 



2 



15 



-96 TPI- 



°a 3 °-::— 

Discounts Starting At Quantity 50 £ Above 

DEFINITELY COLOR-CODED DISKETTES ARE THE MOST 
EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR ORGANIZING YOUR DISKETTE 
FILES Available m Red Blue Green Yellow Orange and many 
other colors 100 "<> er-rnr-f-ee and backed by TIMELESS 
WARRANTY Factory fresh and boned in 10s *'th Tywek 
sleeves reinforced hubs. wnte-protect tabs and labels 
SHIPPING: Add S3 00 per 1 00 diskettes or fraction thereof 
Same day d'soatch VISA and Mastercard accepted COD 
orders oily add S3 00 handling charges Utah residents add 
■ es tax 

WE WILL BETTER ANY PRICE ON THE SAME PRODUCT 
AND QUANTITIES ADVERTISED NATIONALLY 

TOLL FHEE ORDER LINE ONLY: 

mgm 1-800.2333477 >j 

"** INFORMATION AND INQUIRIES 

' 1 B01 942-671 7 

HOURS 9AM 6PM M-F (MT STATf Tir, 



Ompiiter SALT LAKE CITY UTAH 84121 
, illC CALL 1800 AFFAIRS 



Microprocessor 

Software Development 

on VAX or PDP-11. 




You can develop software 
for Z80, 8080, 8085, NCS800, and 
8086 using native mode compilers and assemblers. 

Use low-cost cross tools for other micropro- 
cessors. Interface in-circuit emulators perfectly. You 
can run Intel development tools under ISIS or UD1. 

Our plug-in processor cards let you run CP'M-80, 
CP'M-86, or MS-DOS from anv terminal on vour 
VAX or PDP-11 system. 

Prices start at just S1295. Ask for our FREE 
catalog of 350 development and cross development 
tools. i— •* 

/ 3375 Scott Blvd , Suite 236 

~J / Santa Clara, CA 95054 

(408) 980-1678 



krgistrrrd Tr»d«iurki 



Inquiry 87 



Inquiry 79 



Inquiry 113 



5V4" FLOPPY 
MOTORS 

Now Buehler OEM replace- 
ment spindle motors for all 
major 5 1 A -inch, full-height 
floppy disk drives are 
available for fast delivery. 
Built to exact OEM size, per- 
formance and quality stan- 
dards. Pulleys included. 

For details and prices, 
contact: 



Buehler Services, Inc. 
RO.BoxA,Hwy70-E 
Kinston.NC 28501 
Phone: 919/552-4300 




Inquiry 52 



B Dysan 

^CORPORATION 

SPECIAL DISKETTE OFFER 



The Dysan quality difference is 
yours to try with advanced produc- 
tion techniques that assure every 
diskette to be 100% error-free. 
PLUSI if you call, write, or utilize 
reader service in response to this 
ad— well send you our full-range 
catalog of computer supplies with 
Special Offers good for further sav- 
ings on Dysan diskettes and many 
other quality products. 

LYBEN COMPUTER SYSTEMS 

1250-E Rankin Dr., Troy, Ml 48085 
Phone: (313) 589-3440 

Simply #1 in Service & Reliability 



DISCOVER THE DYSAN DIFFERENCE 



Inquiry 242 



6800 Family 
Cross-Software 




6800/01/05/09 microprocessor 
software development tools for PDP-11 . 
VAX, IBM or other mainframes; Cross- 
Assemblers, High-level Language 
PL/W Compilers, Linker, and 
Simulators. 



WIXIIK 



Inquiry 403 



bo 

% 

O 
X 

a 

■ 

2! 
*} 

Is. 



M$y 



FORTRON CORPORATION Power Supply Professional 

3797 YALE WAY, FREMONT, CA 94538 INFORMATION & CALIF RES. [415] 490-8171 

ORDER TOLL FREE: [800] 821-9771 



FC 135-40 Features: 



•Full Replacement 

to your regular IBM® PC 

65 W. Power Supply 
•4 Disk Drives Connectors 
•Built-in High Air Flow 

High Quality Cooling Fan 
• (QJ)File#E82453 
•Schematics included 
•One year Warranty 
•+5V/15A, +12V/4.2-8.5A 

(peak) 

-12V/1A, -5V/1A, (max. 

outputs) 
•110-230 VAC Convertible 



Quality That You Can Trust 

140 W.(mcxx) Power Switcher 

#FC 135-40 




IDEAL FOR: 
•Upgrade IBM® PC 
•OEM Manufacturer 
•Do it yourself an IBM® 
PCXT Compatible 



Please do not confuse this high quality 
product with the cheap imported units 
sold by others because of same outlook. 



only ^* 

175.°° 

[Assembled & Fully Tested in USA] 



Dealers/OEMs 

are Invited 



For "Build Your Own Computer" and OEM's Convenience, we also carry: 



Q 

a: 

o 

1 

Q 
Q 

X 

o 

a, 
cq 



FC 427 Keyboard 

•For IBM® PC or its compatible products 
•20 Million Time /inn OO 

Life Cycle IU5J. 

•Light on Num and 

Caps Lock Keys 



FC 630A-2 Cabinet 

•IBM identical 

•Use FORTRON FC 135-40 power supply 

•7 & 8 slots rear OO OO 

panels, good for w3» 

0.75" or 1" apart 
slot connectors. 



HSC 130-40 130 Watt Switching Power Supply 

•Good For Faraday, DTC Mega- *ICQ OQ 

board, Colby Computer and Other ,,:<^M W&mm*^ I ' EI » 
Compatible Level CPU boards 

•Backside On-Off Switch 

•Use Cabinet FC-630 

•110-230 VAC Convertible 




FC-330 Hard Disk Controller 

•Up to 2 Hard Disk 0QQ OO 

Drives CWm 

•Fully Buffered I/O 

Bus 
•Built-in ECC 
•Accepts 5 to 

20 MB Hard Disk 



FC-630 Cabinet 



•On-off switch to be on back side 
•Use FORTRON HSC-130-40 power 

su PP ! y QQ o< 

•Good for Faraday ~*^ 

and other compat- 
ible level CPU 
boards. 



99. 



Monochrome/Graphic/Printer Card CT-6040 

•80x25 Text Mode (Default) 

•720x348 Graphic Mode 

•Can Run Lotus 1-2-3 

•64K Graphic Display Memory 

•18 KHz Monitor and Printer Interface 




FC-230 Floppy Disk 
Controller 

FDD 99.° 



FC-530 Monochrome Card 



•Drives 4 x ! 
•IBM fully 
compatible 




•8 x 25 Screen 
•9 x 14 Character Box 
•7x9 Character 
•TTL Level of, 
output 



159.° 




FC-730 Multifunction Card, 
Expandable to 384K 

•From 64 to 384K 1QQ OO 

•l RS-232C, l Cen- ,A? ^ A , 

tronics Printer < MK on Card > 

Ports 



FC-830 512K RAM Card 




•From 64K to 512K 
•Boundary and 

Total Memory 



'. • ! : :■••! 



169.°° 

(64K on Board) 



FC-930 RS232/Parallel 
Printer Port Card 



Fully IBM 
Compatible 

99.00 






FC-940 RS232C/Clock 
Calendar Card 



•One RS-232C Port, 
One Clock 

Calendar, 
Battery Back-up 



Color/Graphic/Printer Card CT-6020 

•RGB Color Port and Parallel 

Port For Printer 
•Light Pen Interface 
•Graphic Mode: 

320 Dots X 200 Lines Color 

640 Dots x 200 Lines B/W 
•Text Mode: 

40 Columns x 25 Rows Color B/W 1QQ OO 

80 Columns x 25 Rows Color / B/W ■ m m ■ 




99 



OO 




OO 



Hard Disk Drives 

(with cable & controller) (10 MB) 

Half Height, Top Brands, 10-32 MB Available 



64K DRAM 

25.°°/9 pes. 

2764 EPROM 

5- 25 /pcs. 



8237A-5 
8284A 
8284C 
MC1489 

74LS245 



12.50 
3.90 
1.50 
0.29 
0.65 



Check with us for PC/AT 
Power Supply 



SALES 1. Shipping & Handling charge $6.00 mini- 

TERMS mum. Check with us for actual charges 



2. CA add 6.5% tax 

3. Restocking charge 15% 



RMA | is required for all 
return merchandise 



5. Prices subject to 
change without notice 



Inquiry 154 for Dealers. Inquiry 155 for End Users. 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 47! 



A Spooler that 
will Spoil You 

Addmaster Paper Tape Handler 
with Big New 7Vz" Reels 




Optional serial interfaces for RS232C or TTY 
or parallel interface/TTL. X-on/X-off 
capability, bi-directional reading and slew, 
reads 150 CPS. rewinds 300 CPS. Stops on 
character, contains power supply and 
Addmaster Model 601 paper tape reader 
Sensibly priced Addmaster Corporation, 
416 Jumpero Serra Drive, San Gabriel, CA 
91776. (213) 285-1121. 



APPLE INTERFACE 
CARD 

ITl & CMOS Tester 

Qrd Call 

140 Card $40.00 

80 Column Curd $50.00 



I.B.M. Adapter 

floppy Disk Control 

Card $89.00 

Color Graphic Qrd $145.00 

416K RAM $175 ea. 

$34.50 9 pes. 

C mpatM 

Motherboard Call 

PROM 8200 PROGRAMMER (FAST US1VERSAL 
TYPE EPROM & PROM PROGRAMMER) FOR 
EPROM 2716-27256; 2516-25256 
(NO ADAPTER NEEDED) FOR PROM 63xx, 74Sxx, 
USxx, 18Sxx. 24Sxx, 28Sxx, 82Sxx, S7Sxx, INCLUDE 
RS252 INTERFACE 

Color Printer (180 pes, 7 colors) $695.00 
Color Punter (4 colors) $495.00 

ALL PHONES 
CALL NOW (312) 280-7610 
DIST. WANTED 

HOFFMAN INT'L 

600 N McClurg CT. STE. 309A 
Chicago, Illinois 6061 1 



Nil mfiRYlTlflC INDUSTRIES INC 

800-231-3680 

Radio Shack TRS-80 s 
Epson Printers 

People you Trust to give you the very best! 







Lowest 

Discount 
Prices 

• Reliable 

Service 

• Quality 
Products 



"Worlds largest volume TRS-80 dealer." 

22511 Katy Fwy., Katy (Houston) Texas 77450 
(713) 392-0747 Telex 774132 




Inquiry 10 



Inquiry 187 



Inquiry 250 



CHIPS 'n DIPS 



QUANTITY ONE PRICES 


8087-3 ! 


5145.00 


8088 


29.00 


256K DRAM 


12.00 


64K DRAM 150ns 


2.20 


i 64K DRAM 200ns 


2.18 


128K DRAM 




Mostek 150 ns 


18.00 


SW Diskettes 


1.75 



FREE UPS SHIPPING 



All parts in stock, first quality. 

No seconds or surplus. 

Same day shipping! 

CHIPS 'n DIPS 

P.O. Box 2517 . The Mall 
Duxbury MA 02331 



617-934-2414 




MEMOREX 

SPECIAL OFFER 

ON DATA 
RELIABLE DISCS 



Memorex seals its floppy discs with a 
process it developed, called Solid-Seam 
Bonding. This seals shut every inch of 
every seam of every Memorex floppy 
disc. 

PLUS! If you call, write, or utilize reader 
service in response to this ad— well 
send you our full-range catalog of com- 
puter supplies with special Offers good 
for further savings on Memorex disk- 
ettes and many other quality products. 

LYBEN COMPUTER SYSTEMS 

1250-E Rankin Dr., Troy, Ml 48083 
Phone: (313) 589-3440 

Simply #1 In Service & Reliability 



CERTIFIED 100% ERROR-FREE 



EPROM 

PROGRAMMER 



APPflOTEK 1000 



$249.95 



COMPLETE WITH 
1 PERSONALITY 

MODULE 
1 1 7 AC POWER-RS232 
■6 BAUD RATES HANDSHAKE TO HOST 
ALLOWS READ. WRITE, VERIFY & COPY 



Full 1 Yur Warranty 



APROPOS TECHNOLOGY 

1 07 1 -A AVE N I DA ACASO Add 

CAMARILLO, CA 930 1 14.00 Shipping USA 
(805} 482-3604 VISA or MC Add 3% 



Inquiry 65 



Inquiry 243 



Inquiry 30 



i.ow c-osn 

K ( K ) f* H O * 



1 1 N 1 V B H S A I . 
PROG W AMMK I* 



lltivr 



- 

t SUPPORTS EPROMS 2516 THRU t*4. 2716 THRU M2. 
HlHI 12H. bHISd THRl bfe EEPHOMS "V2K I 3 
THRl 1 33, 2HI6A THRU b4A (MICROS) H741 THRU 49H 
•FY MODULES, ONBOARD POWER SUPPLY 
t KS232C IHTERFACK, XON HOFT, HTS. CTS. DTK 
KEYBOARD ENTHY WITH UNE ED1TIWJ 

* ACCEPTS ASCII, INTEL, AN!) MOTOHOI.A POHMATS 

* USER FKIENPLY MONITOR TOR I/O DEBUGGING 

* tANl PROGRAMMING SUPPORTED: 27b4 I'NOER * MIS 

* It* HIGH BYTE PROGRAMING TOR IB BIT DATA PATH 

* HYTE. BLOCK. OR CHIP ERASE I EEPROMS ONLY) 

* LIST IN INTEI OH MOTOROLA HEX EOHMAT 

t VKHIEY PROGRAM AND VER1EY BLANK COMMANDS 



1409 01 -IK (-'1RMWAK>. PCH, XEOHMER, HOC 
1409 02 1409 01 ■ EC LI SET OE PARTS 
1409 03 ASSEMBLED AHD TESTED UNIT 
1409 I 1 MK EIWWrAHE, PCB, XEOHMER. DOC 
14(1*1 11 • HU.L SET OF PARTS 
ASSEMBLES AND TESTED UNIT 



* COMMUNICATION DRIVERS EOH MOST PC'S 

HK.C: M1CROSYSTKMS 

H322 MO.IAVE DR. SAN JOSE, CA 9M20 

Tel, (408)997 7685, TWX 4995363 



$90.00 
$200.00 
$J00.00 
$125.00 
$250.00 
$:150.00 

$:is.oo 




'J $299 

This PAL WRITER CARD programs all 

MMI. Tl. NS 20 and 24 Pin PALS- 
This PAL WRITER CARD is a plug-in 
Card for APPLE II. He and Compat- 
ible computers without attach power 
supply, can write, read, copy, protect 
••-etc. ALSO supply PALASM compiler. 
*WE also sell 17 MHZ, 8 channel 
LOGIC ANALYZER CARD. 

TELEX: 276 11 PLOGIC WM~\'M// 

ATTN--CLOCK" g || 

CABLE: "CLOCK" TAIPEI — J ' 

P.O. BOX:9i-247 TAIPEI ROC. 
CLOCK COMPUTER CORP. 



Uninsured? 

SAFEWARE Insurance provides full 
replacement of hardware, media and 

purchased software. As little as $3Vyr covers: 
• Fire • Theft • Power Surges 

• Earthquake • Water Damage • Auto Accident 

For information or immediate coverage call; 

1-800-848-3469 

In Ohio Mil (614) 262 -0559 

(Wtsmt) 

\ **» tx. ■ i i h i & m J 

SAKEWARE. THE INSURANCE AGENCY INC. 



Inquiry 68 



Inquiry 341 



krueger COMPARE OUR PRICES! 

T "S3,T • 100% GUARANTEED ICs 



attractive 

alternative 

on the purchase 

of guaranteed ICs. 



EXTRA 
SPECIAL 
FEATURE 



> 



TMS 
3.00 



MICROPROCESSOR 

For your TI99A 

Computer. This item is 

no longer manufactured 



GROUP 
SPECIALS 

74 Series 

74XX .25 

741XX .35 

742XX .49 

743XX .49 

74LS Series 

74LSXX .25 

74LS1XX .35 

74LS2XX .49 

74LS3XX .49 

74S Series 

74SXX .35 

74S1XX .45 

74S2XX .59 

74S3XX .59 

OUR POLICY 

Delivery: Orders normally shipped 
within 2 business days Add $3 for 
UPS ground-5# & under. Add $4 for 
UPS blue (air), 2# & under, for each 
additional air pound add $1. Arizona 
residents add 6% sales tax 

Payment: Visa. MC, cashiers check, 
certified check, money order, per- 
sonal check accepted. (Allow 10 
days for personal checks to clear ) 
No surcharge on credit card orders 
CODs welcome with cash, certified 
check, cashiers check or money or- 
der Add $3 COD handling charge 

Pricing: Minimum order $20. 30% 
discount on orders over $500 Prices 
subject to change without notice All 
items limited to stock on hand 



COMPARE 

2764 200NS 5.93 



EPROMS 


1702 


2K 


2708 


8K 


68708 


8K 


2716 300-450NS 


16K 


2716 500-650NS 


16K 


2532, 2732 200NS 


32K 


2532, 2732 250NS 


32K 


2763 


64 K 


68766 (24 PIN) 


64K 


2564, 2764 300NS 


64K 


27128 250NS 


128K 


27128 300NS 


128K 


27128 450NS 


128K 



2.63 

2.37 

7.50 

263 

1.88 

4.20 

3.75 

3.20 

11.86 

5.93 

11.95 

10.95 

9.95 



COMPARE 

4116 200NS .59 



DYNAMIC 



4164 150NS 


64K 


4164 150NS 


64 K 


TMS4416 


54 K 


4164 250NS 


64K 


2620 


64K 


4332 


32K 


2118 


16K 


4116 150NS 


16K 


4116 200NS 


16K 


4116 250NS 


16K 


4027 


4K 



RAMS 

9 19.95 

275 

2 75 

1.75 

2.75 

3.00 

1.50 

89 

59 

39 

4b 



COMPARE 

6116 250NS 2.93 



STATIC RAMS 



10415 

2115 

2125 

93415 

93425 

2510 

2511 

2148 

2149 

10474 

2114 200NS 

2114 450NS 

4801 70NS 

4118 250NS 

6116 200NS 

6116 250NS 

10470 

2141 

2147 

TMS4044 200NS 

TMS4044 300NS 

1420 

2168 

2167 

"L" Series 



1Kx1 
1Kx1 
1Kx1 
!Kx1 
1Kx1 
1Kx1 
1Kx1 
1Kx4 
1Kx4 
1Kx4 
1Kx4 
1Kx4 
1Kx8 
1Kx8 
2Kx8 
2Kx8 
4Kx1 
4Kx1 
4Kx1 
4Kx1 
4Kx1 
4Kx4 
4Kx4 
16Kx1 

slightly higher 



6.26 
1.13 
1.50 
3.38 
3.38 
338 
338 
3.92 
3.92 
3.00 
.70 
.50 
3.38 
293 
3,68 
293 
10.44 
1.05 

3 38 
1.05 

90 

4 5C 
4 50 
4 50 



COMPARE I] COMPARE 

6810 .75 II Z80CPU 1.13 



6500/6800 
MICROPROCESSORS 



6502 
6503 
6504 
6512 
6522 
6532 
6545 
6800 
6802 
6803 
6809 
6810 
6820 
6821 
6844 
6850 
6852 
6860 
6875 



1.50 

1.50 
2 75 

1 25 

2 75 
3.75 
8.00 
l 75 

3 25 
7.50 
5.00 

.75 
1 50 
1.25 
10 50 
1.50 
2.25 
3 25 
2^5 



COMPARE 

8155 2.85 





8000 Series 




8031 


14.00 


8243 


5 00 


8035 


3.75 


8251 


325 


8039 


3 75 


8253 


3.50 


8080A 


2 25 


8253-5 


4.00 


8085 


3 75 


8255 


325 


8085A2 


7.50 


8255-5 


3 75 


8086 


12.00 


8257 


3.50 


8088 


11.25 


8257-5 


4.00 


8155 


2.85 


8259 


3.50 


8741 


18.00 


8259-5 


4.00 


8748 


18.00 


8272 


16.00 


8202 


13.50 


8274 


25.00 


8205 


2.25 


8276 


17,50 


8212 


1.00 


8279 


4.00 


8214 


2 25 


8279-5 


5 00 


8216 


1.00 


8284 


4 00 


8224 


1 50 


8286 


4 50 


8226 


1 25 


8287 


4.50 


8228 


2 25 


8288 


10.00 


8237 


6.75 


8289 


18.00 


8237-5 


7.50 


8292 


5.00 


8238 


3.00 







COMPARE 

TMS9904 1.50 



MISCELLANEOUS 



TMS9901 1.50 

TMS9904 1 .50 

TMS9914 3.00 

TMS9980 13.26 



TMS9900 3.00 

9602 1.10 

96L02 225 

96LS02 3.75 



NOTE: This is just a sampling of our 6 million IC Inventory. 



Z80 Series 



2.5 MHZ 

CPU 

CTC 

DART 

DMA 

PIO 

SIO (Any) 



1 13 

1 13 
3 00 
3.00 

1 13 
A 00 



4.0 MHZ (Z80 A) 

CPU 1.8i 

CTC 

DART 

DMA 

PtO 

SIO (Any) 



i .88 
4.50 

4 50 



■ I SO 



COMPARE 

DAC08 1.14 



DATA ACQUISITION 



DAC08 
DAC0800 
DAC0806 
DAC0808 

ADC0809 



1.14 
990 

1.14 



COMPARE 

D765 11.25 



FLOPPY DISK 
CONTROLLERS 



D765 
17.91 
17 93 

8876 



11.25 
11.25 

11.25 
11.25 



8877 
8272 
2143 

9216 



11.25 
18 00 
5.25 

■') 25 



COMPARE 

CRT 5027 5.00 



CRT 
CONTROLLERS 



CRT5027 
CRT5037 
6845 
46505 



5.00 
10.00 
5,00 
5.00 



COMPARE 

AY5-1013A 2.00 



UARTS 



AY5-1013A 


2.00 


1482 


4.50 


AY3-1015A 


3.00 


2350 


450 


TR1402 


2 00 


2651 


450 


TR1602 


2.25 


6402 


350 


TR1863 


2.25 


7201 


10.50 


TR1472 


4.50 







KRUEGER Technology, Inc 





2219 South 48th Street • Tempe, AZ 85282 

800-245-2235 

In Arizona 602-438-1570 



HOURS:8a.m.-5p.m. 

(MOUNTAIN TIME) 

Monday Thru Friday 



Inquiry 221 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 473 



CONVERSES COMPUTER 



Created at MIT in 1966. ELIZA has become the world s most celebrated 
artificial intelligence demonstration program ELIZA is a no n -directive 
psychotherapist who analyzes each statement as you type it in and then 
responds with her own comment or auestion-and her remarks are 
often amazingly appropriate' 

Designed to run on a large mainframe, ELIZA has never before been 
available to personal computer users except in greatly stripped down 
versions lacking the sophistication which made the original program so 
fascinating 

Now. our new microcomputer version possessing the FULL power and 
range of expression of the original is being offered at the introductory 
price of only $25 And if you want to find out how she does it (or teach 
her to do more) we will include the complete SOURCE PROGRAM for 
onty 120 additional 

Order your copy of ELIZA today and you II never again wonder how to 
respond when you hear someone say. Okay, let's see what this com- 
puter of yours can actually do 1 

ELIZA IS AVAILABLE IN THE FOLLOWING FORMATS: 



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH GROUP 

r^^^i 921 North La Jolla Avenue. Oept 8 r~^ 

l^vr^il Los An 9 eles CA 90046 -" 

jJ^Ll (213} 656-7368 1213) 654-?214 

LSBBammi MC VISA and checks accepted 



5 



^BASF 

FlexyOisks® 
5V4" 




Specify soft. 
10 or 16 sector 



Minimum Order 20 



Single side 
double density 



1.35e 



1.55e 



Double side 

double density 

Hard sectors in Library box only .15. 

IMMEDIATE SHIPMENT 

Certified Check - Money Order - Persona) Check. 
MasterCard and Visa. Add $3.00 per 100 or part 
to each order for U.P.S. shipping charges. 
NJ Residents add 6% sales tax. 

178 Route 206 South, P.O. Box 993 

Department B 

Somerville, N.J. 08876 • (201) 874-5050 



THE WORLD'S FASTEST 

S-100 Z-80 SLAVE PROCESSOR 

TurboSlave I 



8 Mhz Z-80H 

Data transfers to 1 

mbyte'second 

S 100 IEEE-696 compatible 

4k Monitor rom 

Low parts count 

No paddle boards 



■ 128k Ram with parity 

• 2 RS-232 Porfs 

50-38 k baud 

• FIFO communications 

• On board diagnostics 

• Low power COnSumptior 

• TurboDOS compatible 



INTRODUCTORY PRICE $495 

Includes TurboDOS drivers fa $100 valuel and 
TurboSlave I with 128k ram 




iARTH COMPUTERS 



P.O Box 8067, Fountain Valley. CA 92728 
TELEX: 910 997 6120 EARTH FV 

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND QUANTITY DISCOUNTS 
CALL: (714)964-5784 

Registered trademarks Z-BOH. Zilog Inc. TurboDOS Software 2000. Inc 
•■* IBM PC VERSION COMING SOON '" 



Inquiry 31 



Inquiry 105 



Inquiry 133 



IBM-PC $1699 

256 K2 DS/DD DRIVES 

Other Configurations Available 

EPSON FX-80/100.,.Best Price 
OKI DATA 92P/93P. . .Best Price 

BROTHER HR-15 $395 

HR-25 $690 

P.G.S. MAX-12 $175 

HX-12 $459 

TANDON (360 K) $155 

TE AC55B(360K) $ 132 

We carry a large selection of 
hardware and software 

CALL US 
COMPUTERLANE UNLTD. INC. 

Exporting DlV. Telex: 662841 SK.COMP 

(818) 884-8644 hours 

22107 Roscoe Blvd. 107 

Canoga Park, Ca 91304 

We Accept C.O.D. - P.O. - L.C. 



DEC/TEKTRONIX 
TERMINAL EMULATION 



For The IBM PC, XT, AX PCjr 
And Compatibles 

PC 102 precisely emulates four DEC terminals: 
VT102, VT101, VT100, and VT52. PC4010 
includes all PC102 features plus Tektronix 4010 
graphics terminal emulation. 

• Complete keyboard/screen emulation 
including line graphics (132-column 
support optional) 

• Supports ANSI color, local printer, and 
bidirectional file transfer; exclusive DOS 
shell key 

• Guaranteed compatibility with all DEC 
applications inlcuding EOT, WORD-11, 
ALL-IN-ONE, DEC-CALC, UNIX vi 

• Written in C and assembler to provide a 
completely memory-resident package that 
communicates at up to 38.4K baud 

Find out why over 3,000 customers prefer our 

products. Call or write for free information package. 

GENERAL MICRO SYSTEMS 

6440 Flying Cloud Drive, Suite 205 

Eden Prairie, Minnesota 55344 

(612) 944-0593 



PRICE BUSTERS! 



DataTech 



^ 



DISKETTES 



LIFETIME WARRANTY 
1 100% ERROR FREE 

• Full surface 
certification 

• Hub rings 

• Write protect tabs 

• User ID labels 

• Box Index label 

• Flip top easel-back 
box (10 pak) 

**x»xi S3 50any qfy 
No* OuttdeO**! « S 

CA raitan* add sates tat 



SOFT SECTOR ONLY 

5V4 ,s Sg.2o»t 
5V4 ,SS 8S»*T 9 

CIA" DSOD $1*9 

D 74 oty 20* I ea 



3V2"ss $ 3 1 

MAC COMPATIBLE Oty 10 



NEW 5/4 $ 4»e! 

high Density Qty 10 

for IBM PC -AT 



FOP IMMEDIATE SHIPMENT, Utt VISA or MASTERCARD 

.Call Collect: 81 8/700-0330 

Bff 



VORKIO 



Inquiry 90 



Inquiry 163 



Inquiry 406 



B Dysan 

^/corporation 



Solve your dtec problems, buy 100% surface 
tested Dysan dbkettes. AD orders snapped 
from stock, wtthfct 24 hours. Call toll FREfc 
(800) 235-4137 for prices and Information. 
\nWa and Master Card accepted. 



PACIFIC 
EXCHANGES 

100 Foothill Blvd 
San Luis Obispo. CA 
93401 (InCal. call 
(805)543-1037) 





Your IBM Model 50, 60, 65, 75, 85, 95 
or WHEELWRITER Typewriter can be 
a computer printer or terminal using 
our interface modules: 
Model 5060 RS232 Serial 
Model 5060-CP Centronics Parallel 

Both Versions ^ ^ 

can be easily 
insta/tedand 
require NO 
modifica- 
tions to the 
typewriter. 
A 2K buffer is 
standard, 8K optional. 

CALIFORNIA MICRO 
COMPUTER 

9323 Warbler Ave., Fountain Valley, CA 92708 
(714)964-9301 




PC EXPANSIONS 


Qume 142A 


.$189 


Teac FD55B 


$129 


1 Tandon TM 100-2 


$169 


Tandon TM101-4 - 


$239 


CDC 9409 


. $169 


Maynard Disk Controller 


$114 


Sandstar Series 


Scall 


Internal 10MB HD systems WS1 . 


. $849 


WS2 


£1020 


MaynStream tape backup . . 


$1229 


Quadboard (64 K) 


$254 


Quadboard (384K) 


.$379 




$199 


ASTSixPakPlus (64K) . .... 


$259 


SixPakPIus (384K) 


$384 


MegaPlus (64 K} 


$269 


Advantage . . ... 


Scall 


I/O Plus 


$129 


PCnet - starter kit 


$809 


HERCULES graphics board 


$339 


Color Card with PP 


$169 


HAYES Modems: 300 . 


$199 


Smartmodem 1200. . . 


, $469 


Smartmodem 1200B 


$399 


Set of 9 chips (64K) 


$25 


256K chips (each) 


$12 


8087 chip .... 


, $139 


Verbatim Datalife disks (20} . 


. $49 


VLM Computer Electronics 


10 Park Place • Mornstown, NJ 07960 


(201)267-3268 Visa. MC. Check 


or COD. 



Inquiry 296 



Inquiry 397 



Now, the lowest 
prices ever on 

3M Scotch' 

/ DISKETTES 

LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



$-|49 a vssoo $-|99 

I Qty. 50 5V«'DSDD I Qty. 50 



5 V SSDD-96TPI -» $2.29 ea 5V DS0D-96TPI -» $2.85 ea 
SOFT SECTOR ONLY! MINIMUM ORDER: 20 DISKETTES 

ADD 3% FOR ORDERS M>144l FL,P '" ™UL 
UNDER 50! HIMffjggfe 

These are factory-fresh 3M diskettes packed in boxes of 10 with 
Tyvek sleeves, reinforced hubs, identification labels and write- 
protect tabs. *_, „ 

3.5' MICRO-DISKETTES— SS 135 TPI -» $2.89 ea 
LIFETIME WARRANTY ON ALL 3M SCOTCH DISKETTES! 

HOURS. 8AM-5PM Central Time. Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



DISK 
WORLD! 



Authorized Distributor 
Information Processing 
Products 



$1 



BASF 

QUALIMETRIC 
DISKETTES! 

LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



29 

Qty 20 



5V 4 - 
SSOD 



,$149 

DSDD I QtY 20 



W SSDD-96TPI - $1.46 ea IV DSDD-96TPI - $1.75 ea 
PACKED IN CARDBOARD CASES! 
BASF QUALIMETRIC DISKETTES have a LIFETIME WAR- 
RANTY with Tyvek sleeves, reinforced hubs, user identification 
labels and write-protect tabs 
SOFT SECTOR ONLY! MINIMUM ORDER 20 DISKETTES 
BASF 3 5' MICRO-FLOPPIES BASF 5VHIGH DENSITY 

FOR IBM PC-AT 
SSDD-135 TPI — $2.50 ea DSDD-HD - $4.91 ea 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 INQUIRIES: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 
HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 
WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 
ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 



RI*\K Authorized Reseller 

I/IVJIA Information Processing • RASF 

WORLD! Meda i 



Incredible value! 

Nashua 
Diskettes 



LIFETIME WARRANT Y! 



$105 



$115^ 

D I Qty. 50 



ea. 

5V4 ' SSDD 
I Qty 50 5Y«*DSDD 

These are poly-bagged diskettes packaged with Tyvek sleeves, 
reinforced hubs, user identification labels and write-protect tabs 

NASHUA Corporation is a half-billion dollar corporation and a 
recognized leader in magnetic media. 

SOFT SECTOR ONLY! Sold in multiples of SO only' 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 INQUIRIES: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS 8AM-5PM Central Time. Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



DISK 
WORLD! 



NASHUA 
Authorized Distributor MAGNETIC 
MEDIA 



BETTER MODEMS 

AT LOWER PRICES! 

. . .and get 24-hour shipping 

on your DISK WORLD! orders 



1200/300 Baud 300 Baud 

Avatex Modem ^^^ Avatex Modem 

$189.95 ea i *^ $59.95 ea. 

Avatex Modems have everything. They're inexpen- 
sive, Hayes-compatible, Auto Dial, Auto Answer and 
high quality (backed by a one-year warranty). 

Best of all, our combination includes a One- Year FREE 
subscription to MCI MAIL and special communications 
software for placing TOLL-FREE orders with DISK 
WORLD!. 

Orders received via MCI MAIL are shipped within 
24-hours (subject to product availability). 

(Cables are net included) 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 * 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



DISK 
WORLD! 



Authorized Distributor 



DISKETTE 
STORAGE CASES 



AMARAY MEDIA-MATE 50: A REVOLUTION 

^m IN DISKETTE STORAGE 

^^^ Every once in a while, someone takes the 

HM^ simple and makes it elegant 1 This unit holds 

■k 50 5v diskettes, has grooves for easy 

^^ ^r stacking, inside nipples to keep diskettes 

from slipping and severa 1 other features We 

like it' CIO QC% ' %2Q0 

O IU.3U ea Shpng 

DISKETTE 70 STORAGE: STILL A GREAT BUY. 

^^■T Dust-free storage for 70 5V diskettes 

^■H Six dividers included An exceMem value.. 



s es $11-95 sS? 

• The original flip-up holder for 10 514" 
diskettes Beige or grey only * -j CC 

♦ 20* Shpng 
FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois 1-312-944 2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time, Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

iiutp 4fi0fi • 30 Fast Huron Str^t • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



DISK 
WORLD! 



DISK WORLD! 

Ordering & Shipping 
Instructions 



Shipping: 5%* & 3 5" DISKETTES— Add $3.00 per each 100 or 
fewer diskettes. Other Items: Add shipping charges as shown in 
addition to other shipping charges. Payment: VISA and MASTER- 
CARD accepted COD Orders: Add additional $3 00 Special Han- 
dling charge. APO, FP0, AK. HI A PR Orders: Include shipping 
charges as shown and additional 5% of total order amount to 
cover PAL and insurance. Taxes: Illinois residents only, add 8% 
sales tax. 

Prices subject to change without notice. 
This ad supercedes all other ads. 

Not responsible for typographical errors. 
MINIMUM TOTAL ORDER: $35.00 



FOR ORDERS ONLY: 

1-800-621-6827 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 



INFORMATION & 
INQUIRIES: 

1-312-944-2788 



HOURS 8AM-5PM Central Time 

Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 * 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 




PRINTER 
RIBBONS: 



at 

extraordinary 
prices! 

Brand new ribbons, manufactured to Original Equipment 
Manufacturer's specifications, m housings (Not re-inked or 
spools only.) 

LIFETIME WARRANTY! 

Epson MX-70/80 . . $3.58 ea. + 25C Shpng. 

Epson MX- 100 ... $4.95 ea. + 25C Shpng. 

Okidata Micro83 . $1.48 ea. + 25C Shpng. 

Okidata Micro84 . . $3.66 ea. + 25C Shpng. 
for orders only: information & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

(In Illinois: 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time. Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



The value leader in 
Computer supplies 
And accessories 



DISK 
WORLD! 



ATHANA 

DISKETTES 
The great unknown! 



QQO $109 

Zf^ Qty. so 5WDSDD ^| Qty 50 

You've used these diskettes hundreds of 
times, as copy-protected originals on some of 
the most popular software packages. They're 
packed in poly- bags of 25 with Tyvek sleeves, 
reinforced hubs, user identification labels and 
write-protect tabs. 



LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



SOFT SECTOR ONLY! Sold in multiples 
of 50 only. 

FOR ORDERS ONLY: INFORMATION & 

1-800-621-6827 inquiries: 

{In Illinois 1-312-944-2788) 1-312-944-2788 

HOURS 8AM-5PM Central Time. Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRICE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



DISK 
WORLD! 



ATHANA 
Authorized Distributor MAGNETIC 
MEDIA 



Nail down 
great prices on 

MEMOREX 

diskettes! 

LIFETIME WARRANTY! 



$128L S »$17(T 

| Qty 20 DSDD | Qty. 20 

MEMOREX DISKETTES come with 
heavy, lint less paper sleeves, reinforced 
hubs, write-protect tabs and user ID 

labels 

3 5- MICRO FLOPPIES cncT «„ TnDnillvp 5 V DSDD-HD 

SSDD-135TP1 SOFT SECTOR ONLY! FOR IBM PC-AT 

$2.44 ea MINIMUM ORDER 20 DISKETTES $3-89 ea 

INFORMATION & INQUIRIES: 

1-312-944-2788 

HOURS: 8AM-5PM Central Time 

Monday-Friday 

WE WILL BEAT ANY NATIONALLY ADVERTISED PRtCE 

ON THE SAME PRODUCTS AND QUANTITIES! 

DISK WORLD!, Inc. 

Suite 4806 • 30 East Huron Street • Chicago, lllinos 60611 



DISK 
WORLD! 



Inquiry 122 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 475 



double wlmlmamgk 

THE OPTION CAPACITY 

OP YOUR IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER 

PC-XTRA 

• DIRECT EXTENSION OF 

IBM PC BUS 

• NO SOFTWARE CHANGES 

• NO HARDWARE MODIFICATION 

• STYLtNG CONSISTENT WITH IBM 

Add at! those special options that you we 
wanting without worrying about tilling 
pkig-ln and back panel space 




DEALER INQU 

S 549 °°* F.O.B. SANTA ANA 

•CAllFOftNOV SESIDiNTS ADO 6% SALES TAX 

P C HORIZONS, INC, 

1701 E. Edinger, Ste. A6, Santa Ana, CA 92680 
(714) 953-5396 




dVdL pufa 3J3SL 



Our New On-Line 
Computer Product Center 

• PLACE YOUR ORDER 

• ACCESS DATA-BASES 

• BROWSE OUR PRODUCT CATALOG 

• SEND ELECTRONIC MAIL 

for a password and a user name contact 

MASTERBYTE COMPUTERS 
OF NEW YORK 

Premium Quality Computers 
and Computer Parts 

SUITE 815 19 WEST 34TH STREET 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10001 

(212) 760-0340 

a stride micro dealer ©1985 



Public Domain 

Software 
IBM-PC * 



PC-SIG has one of the most compre- 
hensive collections of public domain and 
user-supported software for the IBM PC - 
over 270 disks full. Programs range from 
full function word processors and filing 
programs to useful utilities, games and 
numerous specialized applications. 200 
page directory. $6.95 + $1 .50 postage. 

Set of 5 introductory 
disks (word processing, 
filing, utilities and 
games) + Directory $36. 

Online bulletin board 
also available. 
(CA residents add sales tax) 

ISBN O-915835-02-9 

PC Software Interest Group 

1125 Stewart Ct., Suite G 

Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (408) 730-9291 



The PC-SIG 
Library 






Inquiry 294 



Inquiry 25 1 



Inquiry 299 



Turbo + PC Tools = Programs 

Tools for Turbo Pascal^M on the IBMTM pc 
Window Management = menus, Kelp files . . . 

• Unlimited windows • Window overlay & recall 

• Cursor save & jump • Access all colors & chars 

• Window Compiler/Librarian manages window files 
Graphics Drawing - Hiftes plotting power! 

• Ellipses, polygons • Region fill and clear 
& more 

String Formula E valuator = easy calculation 

• 22 functions with nesting and implicit 
multiplication 

• Won't bomb on overflow or division by zero 
System Check and Control - max flexibility! 

• Time & date access • Get disk types & room 

• Get & set default • I/O information 
drive 

All this for only $39.95* . . . Incredible! 
You get 321 K of source code on a double-sided disk 
and a 35 page manual. For single-sided drives add 
$2, Works with DOS 2.0, Turbo 2.0. 
'Please include $2 for postage and handling ($4 if 
outside of USA). Californians add 6%. 

Paragon Courseware 

4954 Sun Valley Road 

Del Mar, CA 92014 

(619)481-1477 

Turbo Pascal is a trademark of Borland International 

IBM is a trademark of the IBM Corporation 



Erases Most Eproms 
in 3 Minutes ^ 



-^,# 




lid State 2-8 Min. 
Timer Version $54.95 

For all 24 or 28 pin devices— 2 at a time 

90 DAY WARRANTEE 
DEALERS WELCOME 



TODAY WARRANTEE SHIPPING A HANDLING 
$2 50 
AZ RESIDENTS 



WdLLIriG CO. 



ADD 6% TAX 



4401 S JUNIPER • TEMPE. A2 85282 • (602) 838-1277 



• ::» 



MEMl 

FLEXIBLE DISCS 



WE WILL NOT BE UNDER- 
SOLD!! Call Free (800)235-4137 

for prices and information. Dealer 
inquiries invited and CO.D.'s 
accepted 




PACIFIC 
EXCHANGES 

00 Foothill Blvd 
San Luis Obispo. CA 
93401 InCal. call 
(800)592-5935 or 
,(805)543-1037 



Inquiry 297 



Inquiry 399 



inquiry 296 




DataTech 



DISKETTES 
Value Priced Diskettes! 
Lifetime Warranty! Hub Rings! 100% Error -Free 
5%" Diskettes Soft or Hard Sector - Boxed 

SSSD $ .99 Each* 

SSDD $1.20 Each* 

DSDD $1.45 Each 

RDD (Flippy) $2. 19 Each 

SUPER SAVINGS ON BULK DISKETTES! 

SSDD... - $ -9 

DSDD H.15 



Minimum order - 50 Diskettes. 

Quantity Discounts Available 

Ml Residents, add 4% Sales Tax. 

Shipping & Handling $4.00 100 Diskettes 

TO ORDER: Call or Write. 

Precision Data Products 

P.O. Box 8367 

Grand Rapids, Ml 49508 

(616) 452-3457 

Michigan 1 800-632 2468 

Outside Mich. 1 800 258 0028 






d 




Pq) Inlyperon 



Software 



Specializing in innovative programming 
tools. 

■ Complete documentation and 
C-source provided (presently DOS only). 

■ Reasonable prices. 

■ High quality and good 
performance. 

Produc ts c urren tly a va ilab le: 
C Preprocessor. Features include 
variables and expressions, loops, 
and full macros. Price — $39.95. 
General purpose editor. Line oriented 
commands with a screen oriented 
submode. Command window. Price 
— $29.95 

Order from: 

HYPERON SOFTWARE 

P.O. Box 3349 
Costa Mesa, CA 92628 

Enclose check or money order. California 
residents add 6%. 



PAL, EPROM 

PROGRAMMERS 

& UV ERASERS 

from $49.95 



LOGICAL DEVICES INC. 

WUte (leluduktf, and 
GttdtomeA, Support 

SEE OUR AD ON PAGE 218 



OG0OGQQ 



ORDER TOLL FREE 

1-800-EE1-PROM 

( 1 -800-331-7766) 



Inquiry 307 



Inquiry 191 



Inquiry 240 



Buy your 

PC products 

direct. 



Buy direct from PROGRESSIVE MICRO DISTRIBUTORS and you'll 
discover that low prices together with a knowledgeable sales staff can 
make a surprising difference. 

You'll be shocked by the lucrative prices PROGRESSIVE MICRO 
DISTRIBUTORS can offer on one of the largest selections of PC products 
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But did you expect same day insured shipping, complete product 
warranties (some up to 5 years), and no surcharge on most credit cards? 
All this combined with over 25,000 square feet of computerized 
warehouse space assures you prompt and efficient service. 
Look Us Over and Compare. 

Send for PROGRESSIVE MICRO DISTRIBUTORS Free catalog. You'll 
find that our catalog prices are discounted even lower than our advertised 
prices in national magazines. Once you start receiving our FREE catalog, 
you'll be entitled to free product literature and reviews by prominent 
industry sources at your request, as well as our monthly PRICE HOT LIST. 

MAIL in your coupon TODAY to start receiving PROGRESSIVE 
MICRO DISTRIBUTORS monthly PRICE HOT LIST immediately. ORDER 
TODAY if you're ready to cash in on the savings right away. Call TOLL 
FREE 1-800-446-7995 for a quote on any of the thousands of PC 
products you need. 



PROGRESSIVE 

MICRO 

DISTRIBUTORS 



BY4 



□ Please send me your FREE catalog. 

□ Please send your monthly PRICE HOT LIST. 

□ Please send me information on the following: 



I am a □ new-user 
I am a D business-user 

Name 

Address 

City 



□ experienced-user 

□ home-user 



State . 



.Zip. 



Please clip and mail to: 

7000 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Norcross, GA 30071 i 

Inquiry 318 



\ PROGRESSIVE 
MICRO 
DISTRIBUTORS 



BY4 



D Please send me your FREE catalog. 

□ Please send your monthly PRICE HOT LIST 

□ Please send me information on the following: 



I am a 
I am a 

Name 

Address 

City 



□ new-user 

□ business-user 



D experienced-user 
□ home-user 



State . 



Zip. 



Please clip and mail to: 
j 7000 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Norcross, GA 30071J 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 477 



New Products to 
Expand Your PCjr. 

. ..„ -/128K — 3ys .„„„ 



AST 512K jrCombo «/«» - $295 
512K MoMlune. Card « /OK — s4gg 
External 360KB Disk Drive _- ^ 

parallel Printer *•* -—--^ s1 " 
8087 Co-Processor Card ^ 

Light Pen *Vf '"^^arT- s =9 
Simultaneous Ds " ***_______ H95 



'299 
*229 
*369 
*94 
*149 
*229 
$44 

*399 
*349 



New! from JADE 

IBM Multifunction Card 



Up to 384K. parallel printer port. RS-232 serial port, 
FREE serial cable, clock/calendar, RAM 
disk/spooler and diagnostic software package. 

LIST JADE 

OK . s 349 s 1 98.95 

64K 449 *239." 

256K s 549 s 349.9s 

384K >649 '439.95 



AST for IBM PC 



Six Pak Pius OK 
Six Pak Plus 64K 
Six Pak Plus 256K 
Six Pak Plus 384K 
Mega Plus 64K 
Mega Plus 256K 
Mega Plus 512K 

I/O Plus 

Preview 

Graphpak 



LIST 

_ N/A 
_ 5 395 
_ 5 695 
_ >945 
_ s 395 
_ ^65 
s 1095 
_ s 165 
_ >399 
_ : 790 



JADE 
s 2 49,95 

269.95 
s 399.95 
'469.95 

S269.95 

s 379. 95 
s 699. 95 
*1 29." 
*309.95 
s 574.« 



64K BAM Upgrade Kits 

for Your S 1 Q 95 
IBM PC * I 51. ** 



High speed RAM upgrade kit with FREE! parity 
(error detection) and one year warranty. We ship 
thousands of these kits to satisfied customers every 
week. 



?*?' FREE CATALOG 



Your 



Just Circle Reader Service #210 on Page 495 



IBM-AT Multi-Function 
Expansion Board 

•Up to 3 Megabytes of RAM 

• Uses standard 64 K or 256K chips 

. Has PAL for split-addressing 

. low power, IBM-AT n,gh speed bus 

. One parallel & one serial port 

. Second serial port optional ^ 

128K, 1 serial, 1 parallel - 4 9| 
Second serial port 



Expansion Boards 
for Your IBM-AT 



JADE AT-Expando Plus . 

AT-Memory Master plus 

AST Ad vantage- AT , . 

STB Rio Grande 128K to 1.5M 
STB Grande Byte 128K to 2.5M 
Quadport-AT 1S, 1P _ 
4 Serial port kit 



Quadmeg-AT 1 MEG _ 
Quadmeg-AT 2 MEG _ 
Quadmeg-AT 4 MEG 

128K Upgrade Kit 

20 Megabyte Hard Disk 



IBM Video Boards 



Hercules Color 

Hercules Graphic - 

Plantronics Color Plus 
AST Preview 



LIST 

_ ^495 

495 

495 

495 

395 

154 

_ -195 

2465 

_ 495 

7490 

_ 395 

1790 



10RK RAM Kit for AT 



LIST 

^359 



JADE 

S 1 69.95 



AST Monograph Plus 

Intelligent Data TTL & RGB . 

Jade Hercules work-a-ltke 

Guadcolor I __ . 

Quadcolor II 

PC Peacock 

Paradise Graphics Card 

Paradise Module A 

Paradise Module B 



JADE 

*395.95 
S429.9S 
s 449 .9s 
s 359.95 
s 299.95 
s 1 39.95 

S 1 79.95 

s 1 995.95 

*31 95.95 

CALL 

s 1 69.95 

s 895.95 



Everex Graphics Edge 



LIST 


JADE 


^245 


s 1 89.95 


499 


s 339,95 


549 


s 379.95 


399 


S309.95 


595 


s 449.95 


294 


S229.95 


399 


S 1 99.95 


295 


s 209. 9 5 


275 


s 209.95 


299 


s 239. 95 


395 


S 319.95 


95 


S 87.95 


275 


s 239.95 


599 


s 389.95 



I Ta Pe Back- U p s rE s 

•IBMPc XT *t *«»*CffI 

* Uniq ue flexihif cas settes 
"}'"or-i mage J''' e ° r complete 

45 "«vtoe h baC,< - U P- 4' 9 S 5 T J «* 

E "'ernal 45 1?b ba< *- u P — 1 m! ' 694 - 95 

495 >1094.»s 



10 Megabyte Hard Disk 
for IBM PC *689.°° 



Plug-n-run. ready to go. complete with controller 
card, data cable, and mounting hardware, totally 
PC/XT compatible, faster than XT, handles 4 
different operating systems, streamer tape back-up 
available. External model includes cabinet & power 
supply. Full one year manufacturers warranty. 



10 MEGABYTE 
10 MEGABYTE 
15 MEGABYTE 
15 MEGABYTE 
22 MEGABYTE 
22 MEGABYTE 
33 MEGABYTE 
33 MEGABYTE 
10 MEGABYTE 
10 MEGABYTE 



Internal 

External 

Internal 

External 

Internal 

External 

Internal — _ 
External — ____ 
Internal Tape _ 
External Tape __ 



KEYTR0NICS Keyboards 



5150 



LIST 


JADE 


5 1795 


*689.95 


2095 


S849.95 


1995 


s 879.95 


5 2295 


s 1069.95 


>2495 


s 1399. 9 5 


^2795 


s 1 599.95 


=3295 


s 1 899.95 


^3395 


s 1999.95 


1000 


s 579.95 


1295 


s 749.95 


LIST 


JADE 


; 209 


M 59.95 




2400 BAUD MODEM 

•O-300. 1200. 2400 baud 

'Bell 103. 113.212A.CCITT V 22 V 22 

Is'LFnT rediai °°« answer 

• « LE D status indicators 

• Self lest S spezker volume control 

./^*2; HayesSmart '"^^ 
" 20 ° baud &1200B modems also ava ,i 

JADE 1200 **J JA °E , 

JADE 1200B IBNi^- ~ £?* ' 22i H 

JADE 2400 " 2 " '219.SS 

'699 '449.95 



t2o Y o ES $429 95 

BAUD ^^**" 

EXTERNAL SMARTM0DEM 



HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 
HAYES 



Smartmodem 2400 

Smartmodem 1200 

1200B w/o Smartcom II 

1200B for IBM PC 

Smartmodem 300 

Chronograph . 

Micromodem 100 

Micromodem lie 

Smartmodem He 

PLEASE Software _ 
Smartcom II 



LIST 

895 
699 
539 
599 
289 
^249 
^399 
299 
399 
395 
149 



PR0M0DEMS 
from PROMETHEUS 



1200B ProModem for IBM PC 
1200 RS-232 ProModem _ 
1200A ProModem for Apple 
1200 ProModem for Macintosh 
Alpha/num Display Option 
Options Processor 



fidK Mom Fynanqinn fnr Ahnvp 



LIST 

^399 
495 
M49 
495 
99 
_ Cj 99 



JADE 

*649.95 

1429.95 

s 339.95 
*369.95 

s 199.95 

M99.95 

5299.95 

s 239.95 

s 249.95 
s 299.95 

*99.95 



JADE 
s 289.95 
s 349.95 
s 349.95 
s 399.95 

S 79.95 

s 79.95 

S5Q95 



Mouse by MOUSE SYSTEMS MICROSOFT for IBM PC 



PC MOUSE with Pop-ups 
PC MOUSE with Paint __ 



FIELD MOUSE (male or female) 
PC PAINT Software 



MOUSE WINDOW Software 
POP-UP MENU Software __ 



LIST 
s 195 
s 220 
*175 

_ *99 
•150 

_ s 50 



QUADRAM for IBM PC 



Quadboard No RAM 

Quadboard 64K 

Quadboard 128K 

Quadboard 256K 

Quadboard 384K 

Quadlink 



Quad 512 Plus 64 K 
Quad 512 Plus 256K 
Quad 512 Plus 512K 

Quadcolor I 

Quadcolor II 



Quad 2 MEG W/512K 

Quad 2 MEG w/1 MByte 

Quad 2 MEG w/2 MByte 

Pallete Master 256 colors 

Quadgraph Graphics Card 

Quadvue IS, IP, C, monochrome 
Asher Voice & Data 



LIST 
*269 

_ s 395 

_ s 495 

_ s 595 

_ s 795 

_ ^680 

_ ^325 

_ >550 

_ >895 

_ s 295 

_ >275 

1 1 95 

1995 

s 3495 

s 695 

-499 

_ s 345 

695 



JADE 
*139.9* 
J 159.« 

s1 29.95 

*69. 95 

M 09.9 5 

J 39. 95 



JADE 

$234.95 

s 275.95 
s 3 19.95 
s 399.95 

S 469 9S 

s 449.95 
*239.95 
s 359.«5 
$ 549.95 
$ 2 09.95 
1209.95 
s 995.95 
M695.95 
s 2995.95 
s 599.95 
s 399.9s 
s 299.« 5 
s 599.95 



TAND0N + m ^-^ „ 
TM 100-2 S19Q 95 
360K ■ ^ %3u 

DISK DRIVE for IBM PC 



Double-sided, double density 

TAN DON 100-2 , 

TEAC 55B 



CDC 1/2 Height 
CDC Full Height 



LIST 

^299 
^249 
s 279 
^299 



JADE 
•129.95 

*119.»5 

•139.95 

•149.95 



SHUGARTSA801R $159.95 



SHUGARTSA801R 

SHUGART SA 801 A SS/DD (Limited Supply) 

LIST >502 M59.95 ea. 2 for *154 « e a. 

SHUGART SA-851R DS/DD 

LIST ^605 & 459.95 ea. 2 for *454 « ea. 



Mouse with Word 
Mouse a la carte _ 



LIST JADE 

>495 s 339.95 
M99 M 29.95 



ISOBAR 



APPLE Accessories 



BERNOULLI Boxes 
from IOMEGA 

SS^S aw 

E *«'°1° mbyte cartridg^ -Ma85 ,3099 ^ 
$1 °0 $79.95 



Hi-Res Monitors 



Amdek300G 

Amdek 300A 

Amdek310A 

Amdek Color 300 
Amdek Color 500 
Amdek Color 600 
Amdek Color 710 
PGS MAX-12 



PGS HX-12 640x240 

PGS SR-1 2 720x480 __ 

PGS Scan-Doubler 

14 inch Ouadchrome II 

Taxan 440 Ultra Hi-res RGB 

Taxan 210 RGB/Composite 

Taxan TV Tuner for RGB Monitor 



PERSYST Boards 



Mono display adapter 

Mono display adapter w/ parallel 
BoB Hi-res display adapter 



LIST 


JADE 


M79 


•139.95 


^199 


s 1 49. 9 5 


'230 


•169.95 


^349 


•269.95 


*525 


•399.95 


>650 


•429.95 


799 


•589.95 


>269 


$179« 


699 


•459.95 


799 


•649.95 


299 


•229.9 5 


599 


•499.95 


799 


•599.95 


349 


•289.95 


99 


•89.95 


LIST 


JADE 


5 225 


•189.95 


^250 


•199.95 


595 


•469.95 


395 


•299.95 



Time Spectrum SB 384 w 64K 



High Speed 8087 APU 



LIST PRICE 293 SALE PRICE s 179.95 



These industrial quality ISOBARs look like a 
standard multioutlet power strip but contains surge 
suppression circuitry and built-in noise filters plus 
15 amp circuit breaker 

LIST JADE 

4 Receptacle Iso-Bar . -89 s 59. 95 

8 Receptacle Iso-Bar s 99 *69.95 



UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SUPPLY 

425 watts of back-up power to save your computer 
system and your valuable data. A must for every 
computer system 

425 Watts UPS s 539 '469.9* 



Full Height Disk Drive 

Half Height Disk Drive 

Disk Drive for Apple He 

Dual Disk Controller 

CP/M 3.0 Card with 64K _ 

ALS Z Engine 

16K RAM Card __ 

Best 80 Column Card 

Printer Card & Cable 

Fan with Surge Protection 

Koala Pad 

Grappler Plus 



Buffered Grappler Plus 



LIST 

^299 
s 249 
s 249 
100 
>399 
*299 

_ s 99 
•219 
s 109 

_ s 99 
s 125 
: 175 

. s 249. 



JADE 
•149.95 

•149.95 
•159.95 

•79.95 

•269.95 
•145, 9 5 

s 39.95 

•139.95 
•49.95 
•59.95 
•89.95 

•119.95 

•179.95 



IBM PC $ 1695 
JADEXPC '1295 

%M r*** mm m ...„.;„«* Disk Controller ___ 



256KofRAM,Tw 



IBM PC 

256K of RAM 
63 Watt Power Supply 
5 Expansion Slots 
IBM Keyboard 



OPTION #1 

256K of RAM 
Two 360K Drives 
Hercules Card 
Amdek 300 

| IBM PC $ 1995 

JADE XPC _ $ 1695 



OPTION #2 

256K of RAM 
Two 360K Drives 
Hercules Card 
PGS HX-12 Monitor 

IBM PC '2395 

JADE XPC - $ 2095 



JADE XPC 

256K of RAM 
140 Watt Power Supply 
8 Expansion Slots 
Keytronics Keyboard 

OPTION #3 

256K Expands to 640K 
10 Megabyte Hard Disk 

One 360K Drive 
130 Watts of Power 
Multifunction Card 
Hercules Card 
Amdek 300 

IBM PC $ 2995 

JADE XPC - $ 2695 



l Place Orders Toll Free! 

m 

* Continental U.S.A. Inside California Los Angeles Area 
(800) 421-5500 (800) 262-1710 (213) 973-7707 




EPSON Printers 

New Plus Series in Stock! 



EPSON P501 45 cps Thermal 

EPSON RX-80 100 cps — 

EPSON RX-80F/T- 100 cps 
EPSON RX-100F/T 100cps 
EPSON JX-80 160 cps Color 
EPSON FX-80FT> 160 cps 
EPSON FX-100F/T 160 cps _ 

EPSON LQ-1500 200 cps . 

EPSON/COMREX 420 cps _ 
EPSON HI-80 4 Pen Plotter _ 

4K Serial Board RX/FX 

NLQ Board for RX/FX 

FX-80 Tractor __ . 

LQ-1500 Tractor 



LQ-1500 Sheet Feeder 



. >249 

. ; 269 

. s 369 

499 

799 
_ s 599 
. -849 

1495 
^2495 
. ^599 
_ 149 
_ ^219 
_ ^59 
_ s 89 
_ *499 



s 209. 95 
S239.95 

S279.95 

S429.95 

s 599. 95 
*399.95 

599.95 
s 1 099.95 

s 489. 95 
s 99. 95 

s 179. 95 
s 39. 95 
s 49. 95 

s 399. 95 



0KIDATA 
Prices Slashed 
*Free IBM ROMS 



160 CPS, Correspondence Quality 



Okidata 92 Parallel 

Okidata 93 Parallel FREE tractor! 

2K Serial Board 

IBM PC ROMS for 92 _ 

IBM PC ROMS for 93 

Extra 82/93 Ribbon ______ . 

82/92 Tractor 



LIST 

s 599 
*995 
5120 

_ ; 59 

_ s 69 

S995 

_ >89 



120 CPS & 200 CPS OKIDATA 



Okidata 82 Parallel/Serial _ 
Okidata 83 Parallel/Serial _ 
Okidata 64 Parallel 200 CPS 
Okidata 84 Serial 200 CPS 
2K Serial Board 



IBM PC ROMS for 82/83 
IBM PC ROMS for 84 



LIST 

^499 

s 775 

_ 1395 
__ 1495 

M50 

s 49 

s 99 



JADE 
135995* 

$ 589. 9 s* 

S99.95 

s 49. 9 5 

S 59. 9 5 

S4 95 

S54.95 

JADE 

s 299. 95 

s 559. 9 s 

5799.95* 

5949.95 

M19. 9 s 
539,95 

s 89. 95 



*FREE! Plug-n-Piay option with 
purchase of 92, 93 or 84 



A-B Printer Switch 



Fully bi-directional switch allows your computer to 
run either of two printers, or allows two computers 
to share one printer, standard parallel switch box. 

LIST JADE 

Printer Switch . 149 s 89.95 

Extra Cable HO ^9.95 



Continental U.S. 
800-421-5500 

Inside California 
800-262-1710 



For Technical Inquires 
or Customer Service call 

213-973-7707 




PRINTERS 
ON SALE!!! 



CITIZEN Printers 



Best Near-Letter-Quality printers for under $1000! 



CITIZEN MSP-10 FT 160 cps 
CITIZEN MSP-15 FT 160 cps 
CITIZEN MSP-20 FT 200 cps 
CITIZEN MSP-25 FT 200 cps 
CITIZEN Serial Option 



LIST 

5 499 

s 749 

s 699 

>949 

; 60 



JADE 
'349.95 
s 529. 9 5 
J489.95 
s 669. 95 

s 49.95 



Printer Accessories 



IBM PC style cable 

Standard parallel cable 
Dual Printer Switch Box 

Apple Card & cable 

RS-232 serial cable 

Ribbons 

Apple lie cable 



LIST 

„ c 54 
_ HO 

149 

109 

. <30 

_ as low as*4." 

39 527.95 



JADE 

S 28.95 

s 28.95 

SQ9 95 

s 49." 

S24.95 



BSBSHS-* 

Kayprcetc u . s . 

\ FREB H»d double-density 34 „ 

Sin9 M: S s1aea doubie-densHV ! « 



C. IT0H Printers 



C. Itoh's best-selling ProWriter and StarWriter 
printers are now available with parallel interfaces for 
Apple & IBM, or a serial interface for Apple He, 
Macintosh. Data General, etc. Full one year 
manufacturers warranty. L|ST JADE 

ProWriter 7500 FT 105 cps s 289 *209. 9 5 

ProWriter 8510 FT 120 cps s 429 »299.95 

ProWriter II 1550 FT 120 cps s 619 s 439. 95 

StarWriter Y1 0-20 20 cps M89 *359. 9 5 

StarWriter F1 0-30 29 cps s 669 s 479« 

StarWriter F10-40 40 cps s 1199 *899.95 

StarWriter F1 0-55 58 cps M449 J 1089. 9 s 

StarWriter F10 Tractor *249 '159.95 

StarWriter A10 Tractor s 199 s 139. 9 s 



Letter Quality 
Printers On Sale! 



Diablo 630 40 CPS 


LIST 

. 2340 
250 
s 599 


JADE 
s 1 569.95 


Tractor for 630 
Comrex CR-lle 
Tractor for CR-lle 


S 2 19.95 

5399,95 
599.95 


Keyboard for CR-lle 


. 199 


s 179.95 


Sheet feeder for CR-lle 
Juki 6100 18 CPS 
Tractor for 6100 


259 
*599 

149 


s 1 99.95 

S3 99. 9 5 
s 124. 95 


NEC 3550 33 CPS 
Tractor for 3550 
Toshiba P1351 


2250 

265 

1895 


s 1 399.95 
*229,95 

M289, 95 


P1351 Tractor 


195 


S 1 74.95 


P1351 Sheet Feeder 


1095 


s 899 95 








Ultra-Violet 
EPR0M Erasers 


Spectronics with out Timer 
Spectronics with Timer __ 


LIST 

>99 

139 


JADE 
s 69. 95 
s 94. 9 5 



We accept cash, checks, credit cards, or purchase orders from qualified firms and institutions. 
Minimum prepaid order $15.00 California residents add 6 1 / 2 % tax. Export customers outside the US or Canada please 
add 10% to all prices. Prices and availibility subject to change without notice. Shipping and handling charges 
via UPS Ground 50C/lb. UPS Air $1.00/lb. minimum charge $3.00 



The LITTLE BOARD with 
FREE! CP/M 2.2 



Miniature single board CP/M computer designed to 
mount directly on top of a 5 1 / 4 " floppy disk drive 
(7.75" x 5.75") Contains Z80A CPU. 64K RAM, 
Boot EPROM, terminal port, modem port, parallel 
printer port, floppy disk controller, and CP/M 2 2 
included FREE 1 

LIST JADE 

Little Board with CP/M 400 s 349.95 

Support Package 50 s 48. 95 

Serial Cable s 13 s 11.95 

Diskless Monitor Eprom ^30 s 24.9 & 



QUADRAM 
MICR0FAZER Buffers 



Expandable to 64 K (parallel model expands 

_ s 169 

_ 225 

_ 445 

_ M99 

_ s 260 

_ 199 

32K Parallel in Serial out _ . 260 

8K Serial in Serial out 199 

32K Serial in/Serial out _____ „0 



8K Parallel in Parallel out 
32K Parallel in/ Parallel out 
128K Parallel in Parallel out 
8K Serial in /Parallel out _ 
32K Serial in Parallel out _ 
8K Parallel in /Serial out _ 



to512K) 

s 1 39. 9 5 
s 1 64.95 
S269.95 
s 1 69.95 
S 1 99.95 
s 169.95 
s 1 99.95 
s 1 69.95 
s 1 99.95 



PRACTICAL PERIPHERAL 
MICR0BUFFERS 



Stand alone Microbuffers for Printers & Modems 



32K Parallel in /Parallel out. 
64K Parallel in' Parallel out. 

32K Serial in /Serial out 

64K Serial in Serial out 

64K Add-on Board 



LIST 

299 
349 
299 

349 
M79 



JADE 

s 229.95 

s 269. 95 

s 229.95 

s 269.95 

s 1 49.95 



J. 



Computer Products 



BUY 

UNITED 

STATES 

SAVINGS 

BONDS 




RAM -RAM* RAM 



64 K 150 NS64Kxl $2.00 
256K 1 50NS 256KH $10.50 

* PARTS IN STOCK 

* FACTORY NEW, PRIME PARTS 

* WILL MEET MOST 
ADVERTISED PRICES * 

* NEXT DAY SHIPMENT* 

EC. I. 

P.O. BOX 8067 

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, CA 92728 
TELEX: 910 997 6120 EARTH FV 
CALL (714) 964-5784 



VT100 or D200 

on your 

PC, jr, XT, AT 

or compatible 

ZSTEMpc-VTIOO Smart Terminal EMulator 
132- col. by windowing-no addit. hardware 

Double High/ Double Wide Characters 

Full VT100 line graphics. Smooth scrolling 

2 -way file transfers incl. XMODEM 

Full keyboard sof (keys MACROS 

Speeds to 30.4KB. High Throughput 

ZSTEMpc-VTIOO $150. ZSTEMpc-D200 $125. 

30 day money back guarantee. MC VISA 

ZSTEM Communications Division 

KEA SYSTEMS LTD. 

#412-2150 W. Broadway 

Vancouver, B.C. CANADA V6K 4L9 

Support (604)732-7411 

Orders (800) 663-8702 



Inquiry 436 



Inquiry 407 



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We want to help! 

// you have a problem with your BYTE 

subscription, write us with the details We'll 

do our best to set it right But we must 

have the name, address, and zip of the 

subscription (new and old address, if it's a 

change of address) If the problem involves 

a payment, be sure to include copies of the 

credit card statement, or front and back of 

cancelled checks Include a "business 

hours" phone number d possible 

BYTE 
Subscriber Service 

P.O. Box 328 
Hancock, NH 03458 



IBM™ APPLE™/COMMODORE™ 
BARECOrVI™ MODEM 

ADD-ON MODEM FOR 
PERSONAL COMPUTER 

• BELL I 03 AND/OR 2\2 COMPATIBLE 

• CCITT V2l AND/OR V 2i COMPATIBLE 

• AUTO DIAL/ANSU/ER/DISCONNECTION 

• FREE OF CHARGE COMMUNICATION 
SOFTWARE 

DEALERS AND DISTRIBUTER INVITED. 

OEM DESIGN/MANUFACTURE 

WELCOMED 



, COMPOWER 

TECHNOLOGY CORP 
Made in Taiwan, but not Copied. 



P.O. BOX S8I44 TAIPEI. TAIWAN, ROC. 

TELEX: 20370 COMPOWER 

TEL: (02) 3937976, 32 1 3060 



INVENTORY CLEARANCE! 
IMMEDIATE DELIVERY! 

General 
DataComm 
Dial Modems 




103J-L 

300 bps, 

full duplex. $99.00 

113A 300 bps, full duplex. Reliable LSI 
design $149.00 
212A 1200 bps full duplex synch or 
asynch. 300 bps synch. $ 299.00 
We also have quantities of 4800 and 
9600 bps modems. 

Call Toll Free 1-800-842-3672 
General DataComm 

Middlebury, CT 06762-1299 

Add $5.00 shipping and handling 
Conn. res. add sales tax. 



Inquiry 437 



Inquiry 430 




65 

years worked 40 
retirement benefits 

The US Department of Labor has a free 
booklet that will help you answer these 
questions and a lot more. Send for it today. 

Write: Pensions, Consumer information 

Center, Pueblo, Colorado 81009 

U.S. Department of Labor 



Your LC. Connection 
(213)516-7018 



DYNAMIC RAMS 

4164-150NS 


2.45 


STATIC RAMS 

2016P-1 (100NS) 
6116P-3 050NS) 


4.45 
3.75 


EPROMS 

2716-450NS 
2532-450NS 


3.00 
4.50 



MANY OTHERS IN STOCK 
CALL FOR SPECIAL PRICES 

• Low, low prices 

• Top Quality Parts 

• Wide Selection 
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INTERNATIONAL n 



EXIM 



13760 Grammercy Place 
Gardena. CA 90249 
TLX: 664747 HYEXIM FAX: (213) 217-0363 



Two Dollars 
SALE %■ § 



The Great Book of Garnet 
46 game*. 1 44 page* 
Ord»rNo182w»sS9 9S now I 2 

More on the Smtyfour 

Machine Language Programs for the 

advanced user. 

Older No 1B3 was » 9 95 now S 2 

Machine Language Programming on 

the C 64 

Order No 184 w*< S 12.96 

no«S2 



Hardware expansions, I/O program 
ming, A D conversion 
Order-No 186 wait 12 95 

now $2 



SUPER BOOK FOR THE APPLE II 

The APPLE in your Hand 
Advanced BASIC programs, iniro 
duct ion into machine language. 
FORTH. Tips & Tricks (220 pages! 
Order No 178 was $ 12.95 

now J 2 

BOOKS FOR ATARI 800 XL 

Games for the ATARI 

1 12 pages full of super games 

Order No. 162 was t 7.95 now t 2 



ATARI Machine Language 

Programming 

Order No 169 was S 9 95 now » 2 

Hackerbook for the ATARI 

Order No. 172 was S 9 95 now % 2. 



The programs from the books are alto available on disk. Each disk is 8 9.95. 

ELCOMP PUBLISHING. INC 

1174 wot Foothill Blvd Unn E 

Uoumd.CAS17B6 

Phont: (7141 985-4477 .Tin.: » 81 91 



Inquiry 1 48 



Inquiry 1 37 



DoKa 



COMPUTER 
PRODUCTS. 

Inc. 
ORDER TOLL FREE 

(800) 
538-8800 

(CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS) 

(800) 

848-8008 





[MasterCard] 



STATIC RAMS 



2101 

S101 

2101-1 

21021-4 

2I02L-2 

2111 

2112 

2114 

2114-25 

21141-4 

2114L-3 

21141-2 

2147 

TM84044-4 

TMS4044-3 

TMS4044-2 

MK4118 

TMI2018-20 

TMM2016-15 

TMM2010-10 

HM8116-4 

HM611&-3 

HN6116-2 

HMS116LF-4 

HM8116LP-3 

HM6118lr-2 

2-6132 

Hi6264P-^ 

HM6264LM5 

HM62641M2 



256 i 
256 » 
1024 i 
1024 x 
1024i 
256 t 
2S8i 
1024 t 
1024 i 
1024 i 
1024i 
1024i 
4008i 
4008 i 
4006i 
4006 i 
1024 1 
2048 1 
2040 1 
2048 1 
2048 1 
2048 1 
2048i 
2048 1 
2048 1 
2046 1 
4096 i 
8102i 
8192 1 
8192i 



4 (4S0ttl 
4 (450u) 
1 [450m 
1 1450m 
1 (2S0n| 
4 MSOu, 
4 I450ui 
4 (460n) 
4 50ii 
4 « bOix 
4 300ii 
4 (200m) 

1 fSfiM) 
1 «5Cn 
1 IQOu 
1 (200m) 
8 (250m) 
8 |200h) 
I H50m) 
8 1100m) 
8 1200m) 
6 (150m| 
8 '20m 
8 |200tt) 
8 (150m) 
8 |120m) 
6 1300m) 
8 50m. 
8 (150h| 
8 (120m) 





1 90 


iMMll 


390 




79 


(LP) 


89 


(LP) 


1.20 




229 




229 




99 




1.11 


in 


1 20 


(LPI 


! 30 


flPI 


1 40 




3 95 




2 35 




3 45 




3 95 




8.95 




395 




445 




595 


(CMl) 


4 40 


leMi) 


4 90 


Icmi) 


5 90 


|cMt)|LF| 


4 90 


IonOILP) 


5 90 


lantlllP) 


790 


-!• 


2695 


(CMS) 


19.65 


(cMt|(Lf| 


2265 


tcwiHLf) 


24.68 



LP = Low Power Qstst = Quasi-Static 



DYNAMIC RAMS 



TMS4027 

UP0411 

MM5280 

MK4106 

MM5296 

4116-20 

4116-15 

4118-12 

2118 

4184-25 

4164-20 

4104-15 

41256-20 

41286-15 



4096 i I 
4006 i I 
4006 i 1 
8192 i 1 
8182 i 1 
16384 1 1 
16384i 1 
16384i 1 
16384 i 1 
65836 i I 
65538 i 1 
65536 i 1 
262144 i 1 
262144 i 1 



I250m| 
(300m) 
1300m) 
(200m) 
(250m) 

200m 
[150m| 

'20m 

1150m) (5,) 
I250m| |5i| 
!200mj (5*1 

!50m (5ii 
(200m) 

150ml 



145 

1 95 
195 

49 
49 
1% 
99 
149 
3 95 

2 00 
2 22 
2.60 

12.06 
15.05 



5U - Single 5 Volt Supply 



EPROMS 



1702 

2708 

2758 

2716 

2716-1 

TMS2516 

TMS2716 

T182632 

2732 

2732 A-4 

2732 A-36 

2732 A 

2732 A-2 

2764 

2764-25 

2764-20 

TNI2S84 

MCM68764 

MCMSI706 

27128-45 

27128-30 

27126-25 

27256-25 



256 i 8 
1024 i 8 
1024 i 6 
2046 i 6 
2048 i 6 
2048 i 6 
2048 i 6 
4006 i 6 
4006 i 8 
4096 i 6 
4006 i 8 
4006 i 8 
4096 i 8 
8102 i S 
8162 18 
8102 i 1 
8182 i 6 
8102 i 8 
8102 i 8 
16364 i 8 
16384i8 
16364 i 8 
32766 i 8 



(III) 

<450m) 
on. 

(450h) [5i| 
|350m( (5i| 
(450m) [6i| 
(480m) 
1450mI i5»: 
(450m) (5it 
|450m) (2 hi 
(350MH21.I 
(250m) (2 li! 
(200m) (2 lil 
1460m) I5n 
|250m| |5f| 
(200m) (Sr| 
1450m 1 (6») 
,450m (5f) 124-pil 
|360m| N 124-fiil 
|250m| (5i) 
(300m) (5f) 
(250m) |5f) 
1250m! Mi 



3 95 
2 49 
5 90 

2 95 

3 95 
3 96 
685 
3 85 
385 
395 

3 95 
5 95 
195 

4 95 

5 95 
9 95 
605 

17.16 
19 95 
14.0S 
16.98 
19.95 
70.0S 



5i = Single 5 Volt Supply 







74LSOO 






74UOO 


23 


74U125 


41 


74U260 


58 


741101 


24 


74LS12B 


49 


7411286 


54 


74LS02 


24 


74U112 


58 


74L1273 


145 


74L803 


24 


74LS133 


58 


7411276 


3 30 


74U04 


23 


74U136 


38 


74LS279 


48 


741105 


24 


74L8137 


88 


74U2I0 


195 


74 1808 


27 


74U138 


.54 


74LS2S3 


68 


74LS09 


28 


74L1138 


54 


-S29C 


86 


74LI10 


24 


7411145 


1.11 


74U2I3 


66 


74LS11 


34 


74LS147 


2 45 


7411296 


98 


74L812 


34 


7411148 


! 30 


74LI296 


88 


74LS13 


44 


74U161 


54 


74U29I 


1 70 


74LS14 


58 


74U163 


54 


74(1323 


3 45 


74LS1S 


34 


74111 64 


; 85 


74U324 


170 


741120 


24 


74UH5 


86 


7411362 


in 


741821 


28 


74U156 


88 


74(1353 


in 


74L122 


24 


74LS157 


64 


7411363 


130 


74L8Z6 


28 


74LS15B 


58 


74U364 


190 


74LS27 


.26 


7411160 


88 


74(1365 


48 


74LS28 


.34 


7411161 


64 


7 4L8386 


48 


74LI30 


.24 


74UIB2 


68 


74LS397 


44 


74L832 


26 


74U163 


64 


74L8368 


44 


74LS33 


54 


7411164 


68 


74LS373 


135 


74U37 


34 


7411165 


94 


7411374 


135 


74LS38 


34 


74U168 


•90 


7411377 


135 


741140 


24 


74LI1 68 


1 70 


74L3378 


1 13 


74LS42 


48 


74LI169 


.70 


74U378 


130 


74U47 


74 


7411170 


145 


74LS3I5 


185 


741148 


.74 


74LS173 


68 


741838b 


44 


74LS49 


74 


74L1174 


54 


7411390 


1 15 


74L85I 


24 


74LSI75 


54 


74LS393 


1 15 


741854 


28 


74LS1B1 


210 


7418385 


1 15 


741855 


26 


74U189 


8.90 


74U39S 


145 


74L863 


120 


7 411 190 


88 


7411424 


2.90 


74LS73 


38 


74U19I 


88 


7411447 


36 


74LS74 


34 


74111 92 


79 


74U490 


190 


741175 


31 


74U193 


78 


74LSI24 


3.95 


74L376 


31 


741SI94 


68 


7411B40 


2 15 


74LS7I 


48 


74111 95 


66 


7411645 


215 


74LS83 


59 


7411196 


78 


74UMI 


1 65 


74L385 


86 


7411187 


78 


74I1U0 


1.85 


74LS88 


38 


7411221 


88 


74UI70 


1.46 


74 11 90 


54 


7411240 


94 


74LSI74 


9 60 


741191 


88 


741124 1 


98 


74LSN2 


3.15 


74LS92 


54 


7411242 


96 


74LIB83 


315 


74LS93 


.54 


7411243 


98 


74LS8S4 


315 


74LS96 


74 


7411244 


125 


•4L8685 


3.15 


741896 


68 


74LS24B 


145 


7411988 


2.36 


74LSI07 


38 


74U247 


74 


74LSU9 


3.16 


7 4 LSI 09 


38 


7411246 


96 


74U783 


23.96 


74LS112 


38 


7411249 


98 


811195 


1.45 


74LS113 


38 


74LS2S1 


56 


81L896 


1 45 


74LS114 


36 


7411253 


58 


•11*97 


1 45 


74U122 


44 


7411257 


58 


611199 


I.4& 


74U123 


76 


7411258 


58 


25112521 


2.75 


74U124 2.IS 


74U2&I 


270 


? 5182589 


4.20 



CRT CONTROLLERS 

6B45 11.15 1275 21.16 

6BB45 18.95 7220 38 95 

H 046505ip 1 1.95 C9T5027 1815 

1147 1095 CHT5037 21.16 



1C1372 
68047 . 



6.90 
23.95 



TMS9916A 

DP83S0 . . 



3615 
4815 



DISC CONTROLLERS 



1771 
1791 
1793 
1795 
1797 
2791 
2793 
2795 



14.95 


2797 .... 


. . 6415 


21.95 


6843 


33.95 


2595 


1272 .... 


11.95 


21.95 


UPD765 . 


.... 11.95 


21.95 


MBII76 


23.95 


49.95 


MI1177 


. . 25.95 


49.95 


1691 .... 


.... 6.95 


54.95 


2143 .... 


.... 6.95 



UV ERASERS 

QUV-T8/1 $4995 

ECONOMY Model 



„,.*..* E&1B 




• Erases 15 EPROMS tn 20 minutes 
e Plastic Enclosure 



6500 
1 MHZ 2 MHz 

85022 410 6502A 5.90 

9604 6.90 6&20A 6.90 

6505 810 6522A 9.90 

6507 9.90 6S32A 1 0.90 

1520 4.30 6546A 1210 

1522 410 6561A 10.90 

«632 9.90 « MH _ 

8545 9.90 J MMZ 

1551 910 65026 7.90 



6800 



1 MHz 



68 BOO 



6802 
6803 
6808 



8110 
1120 
112 1 
8121 
6140 
6143 
6144 
6145 
1147 
1150 
6852 
6860 
0162 
6875 
1880 
6883 



2 90 


2 MHz 


7.00 

17.90 


68600 


12 90 


68802 


810 


88809 


890 


68809E 


2.90 


68110 


430 


61121 


210 
1 3.90 


II140 


11 90 


61945 


33.90 


61150 


2410 
1110 


680O0 


10.90 


610001 


210 


11047 


590 


11411 


/.9U 
in on 


18852 



8.9 

1.9 

21.9 



11714 
11711 



9.90 
1110 

1110 

mo 

510 
510 
1110 

1110 
510 

34.90 
2310 
1110 
1410 
8 90 
1715 
1915 



8000 



8031 
8035 

1039 ... 
INS-8060 

INS-8073 



14.90 
5.90 
510 
16.90 
2990 
310 

1015 4.90 

1015A-2 11.90 

1016 24.90 

1017-3 |S lit.. 159.90 
1017-2 181Hz) . 279.90 

1011 19.90 

8089 59.90 



6263 

8263-6 
8266 

§255-5 . . 

•267 

1257-5 81 



690 
710 
4.45 
4.90 

7.1 



8100 



8131 . 
1155 . . 
8165-2 . 
8156 
8185 .. 
8185-2 . 



290 
6.90 
790 
610 
2810 
38.90 



8259. 

8259-5 . 

1271 . . . 

1272 . . 

1274... 

1275... 

1279.. 

8279-5 

8212 

1213 

1214 

1216 

8217 . 

8218 

8219 

8292 . . . 



5.90 

010 

8910 

19.90 

2910 

2610 

8.90 

7.90 

646 

6.45 

4 90 

8.45 

645 
12.90 
44.90 
1210 



8200 



8300 



8202 


. . 2310 


8203 


. . . . 38.90 


8205 


.... 2.90 


8212 


, . . . 1.76 


8214 


. . . . 3.75 


•211 


1.76 


•224 


... 210 


•226 


.... 1.76 


1228 


.... 3.45 


•237 


.... 12.90 


8237-5 


.... 1410 


•231 


.... 4.45 


8243 


.... 4.46 


8250 


... 9.90 


1251 


.... 3.90 


825U ... 


4.45 



8303 
8304 
6307 
6308 

8310 
6311 



210 
110 
210 
210 
3.90 
310 



2 MHz 



8700 

•741 28.90 

•74S 1910 

•749 2110 

•755 2310 



80000 



80166-6 
80188 .. 



9910 

89.90 



Z-80 



Z80-CPU 
Z80-CTC . 
Z80-0ART . 
Z80-DMA 
Z80-PI0 . . 
280-810/0 
Z80-1IO/1 
Z80-SI0/2 . 
Z8O-SI0/9 . 



4 MHz 

B M W 

Z10A-CTC 

Z00A-DART 

Z80A-DMA 

Z80A-PI0 



1.95 ZMA-* 10/0 915 

1.95 Z80A-II0/1 0.96 

616 Z80A-SIQ/2 9.95 

715 Z80A-8I0/9 9.95 

8 95 6 MHz 

9.95 Z80B-CPU 715 

8.95 Z808-CTC 115 

815 Z80B-P10 6.95 

ZB0B-DABT 1816 

Z80B 810/0 .... 28.95 

Z90 119/2 2616 



2 45 

2 45 
795 



ZILOG 



815 Z6132 29.96 

2.45 Z8671 3115 



MEMORY 
EXPANSION KIT 




4164 200ns 
9 for $19.98 



DIP SWITCHES 



v 






4 POSITION 79 

5 POSITION 85 

6 POSITION 15 

7 POSITION 19 

8 POSITION 89 

ZIF SOCKETS 



UptaZIF 41! 

16 plsi ZIF 41! 

24 pin ZIF 511 

28 |li ZIF 63 

40 pie ZIF 91' 

ZIF = TEXTOOL (Zero Insertion Force 

IC SOCKETS 

(1 to 99) 



IpfaST... 12 

■4|.iST 14 

10* ST 11 

11 per 19 

20 Ik ST 11 

22 ete ST 29 

24 fta ST 19 

2 8 m ST 39 

40 pk ST 48 

ST ■ Soldertall 



8 pie WW 
'4 in WW 
I6»)i WW. 
ISptt WW 
?c »• WW 
22 pli WW. 
24 pn WW 
28 •• WW 
40 in WW 

WW = Wlrewrar 



5t 

61 

6! 

91 

1.0' 

1.3' 

1.4- 

11 

11 



CRYSTAL CLOCK 
OSCILLATORS 



PANT NO. 

1.000 

1.843 

2.000 

4.000 

8.000 
10.000 
16.000 
18 432 
19.860 
20.000 
32 000 



1 0000 MHz 
1.8432 MHz . 
2.0000 MHz . 
2.0972 MHz 

2 4576 MHz 
3.2768 MHz 
3.5795 MHz 
4 0000 MHz 
4.1943 MHz . 
4.9110 MHz . 
5.0000 MHz 
50688 MHz 
5.1850 MHz . 
5.2429 MHz 
5.7143 MHz 
6.0000 MHz . 
6.1440 MHz . 
6 4000 MHz 

6 5536 MHz 



FREQUENCY 
1.0000 MHz 
11432 MHz 
2.0000 MHz 
4.0000 MHz 
8.0000 MHz 
10.0000 MHz 
16.0000 MHz 
18.4320 MHz 
191601MHz 
201000 MHz 
32.0000 MHz 

CRYSTALS 

... 2.69 

... 219 
....1.95 

...116 

... 116 
.... 1.95 
... 1.95 
.... 115 
.... 115 

1.95 

.... 1.96 
....1.95 

...116 

...115 
. . . . 115 
. . . . 116 
. ... 1.95 
. . . 116 
....1.96 



PIIICI 

611 

691 
6.9! 
6.9! 
61! 
6.9! 
6.9! 
61! 
61< 
61' 
61! 



8.0000 MHz. 


. . 1.1 


! 0.0000 MHz. 


. . li 


10 7386 MHz. 


..li 


12.0000 MHz,.. 


..li 


141192 MHz... 


..li 


15.0000 M Hi 


..li 


160000 MHz. 


..li 


17.4300 MHz, . 


..1.1 


18 0000 MHz. 


..1.1 


'8 4320 MHz. 


..1.1 


'9 6608 MHz. 


..li 


20 0000 MHz. . . 


. .1.1 


22 1184 MHz. 


..M 


32.0000 MHz. . . 


..IJ 


36.0000 MHz. . . 


. . li 


481000 MHi . , 


..1.1 


49.4350 MHz. . . 


..1.1 


491900 MHz. 


. . li 



32.768 KHz .... .. 19 

VOLTAGE REGULATORS 



7806T . 
78M05C 
7808T... 
7812T... 



. .74 

. 14 

, .74 

. .74 

7815T 74 

7M4T 74 

7M5K 1.34 

ISI2K 1.34 

ram 1.34 

7M4K 1.34 

78L05 18 

78112 18 

7IL16 18 

7IH06K 910 

7BH12K 910 UA78S40. 



7906T . . 

7901T . 

7912T.. 

7916T.. 

7924T.. 

7905K. 

7912K 

79I5K.. 

7M4K.. 

79L9S . . 

79L12. 

79L15 

LM323K. 



.1 
. J 
. J 
. J 
. J 

I.' 

I. 

1. 

1. 



CJ=TO-220 K = TO-3 
L = TO-«2 



ROBOT KITS! 

PIPER-MOUSE 

Controlled by sound sensor and 1 -channel 
alectronic circuit. Use the whistle in this kit 
and Piper-Mouse follows your commands, 
:urning left or right, stopping and starting. 
Jses 2 AA and 1 9V battery (not included). 

MV-915 $44.95 

RIBBON CABLE 






SIN6LE COLOR 


COLOR COOED 


CONTACTS 


V 


10' 


r 


10" 


10 


45 


4.30 


.71 


7.20 


16 


.50 


4.70 


95 


1.70 


20 


10 


5.60 


1.15 


10.90 


25 


70 


S.50 


112 


11.50 


26 


.70 


6.50 


1.27 


11.50 


34 


.93 


850 


1.55 


14.40 


40 


117 


ii so 


1.02 


10.70 


50 


1.21 


12.00 


2 40 


21.90 




RESISTORS 

U WATT 5% CARBON FILM 
ALL STANDARD VALUES 

-ROM1OHM-10MEGOHM 

>OPCS 1.25 

OO PCS 2.00 

1 ,000 PCS 15.00 



Checkmate 

Technology, 

Inc. 



tPPLE lie Special 

Extended 80-Col. 
VIDEO CARD 

$ 69. 95 

• 64Kto128K* 
ULTIVIEW 80/160 249. 00 

3-160 columns with any monitor! 

Screens: 80x24, 80x32, 80x48, 
96x24, 132x24, 132x30, 160x24 
On-screen BOLD and Underline 
Reverse scrolling 
Easy-to-read Wide-angle mode 
Apple M and Me compatible 
Prompt lines 
Upper & lowercase letters 




APPLE & IBM 
ACCESSORIES 



80 Column Apple II+ ... 149.95 
80 Column Apple ME ... 119.95 

Z80 Apple 11+ 89.00 

Z80 Apple HE 89.00 

16KCard 39.95 

Cooling Fan 38.95 

Power Supply 74.95 

Joystick 29.95 

RF Modulator 13.95 

Disk Drive 1 69.95 

Controller Card 59.95 

Paddles 7.95 



INNOVATORS IN MICRO COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY 



149. 95 



VIEWMAX-80 

80-Column card for Apple II series 

e Video Soft Switch 

e Inverse Video 

e VIDEX's Vldeoterm compatible 




VIEWMAX-80e 11 9. 85 

80-Column extended video card for 
Apple He 

• 64K RAM, expandable to 128K 

• Double High-resolution circuit 

• Compatible with Pascal & CP/M 




PRINTMAX 59. 95 

Parallel printer card, Apple II series 

e Centronics compatible 

e Variable print widths 

e Up to 5000 characters/second 

APPLE & IBM Compatible 
DISK DRIVES 




1 69." 



• Shugart mechanism, made in USA 

• Directly replaces Apple Disk II 

• Fully compatible with Apple Controller 
or other Apple compatible controllers 

• One Year Warranty 

FULLor 1 / 2 -Height 

16K RAM Card -Apple II+ 

e 2-Year Warranty 




Inquiry I2b 



Assembled & Tested . . 


39.95 


•;.;'■'■■.■■• 




m^Bm 





APPLE or IBM JOYSTICK 
95 



$29 



Compatible for either: 
APPLE Hand APPLE Me 

OR 
IBM-PC, JR., & IBM-XT 

MULTIFUNCTION CARD 




e 64K to 384K RAM • Clock Calendar 

e Parallel Port e Software Included 

e Serial Port e 1 -Year Warranty 

$249.95 
MEMORY CARD 




• Expandable to 51 2K 

• Fully compatible with IBM software 

• Fully compatible w/IBM diagnostic utilities 

• Serial Port Available 

• 1-Yiar Warranty 

$199.95 



MEMORY 
EXPANSION KIT 




4164 200ns 
9 for $19.98 



DISKETTES 



5V4" 



ATHANA: (K 1 ) 

25 per package 

SS/DD 29.75 or 1.11 ti. 

DS/DD 34.75 or 1.39 ea. 

LIFETIME WARRANTY 
ON ALL ATHANA DISKETTES 

NO LABEL: (XK) 
25 per package 

SS/DD...... 24.75 or .99 m. 

DS/DD 29.75 or 1.19 ti. 

2-YEAR WARRANTY 
ON ALL BULK DISKETTES 



ROBOT KITSf 

PEPPY 




2-way sensor detects noise or solid objects 
in its path. When front sensor contacts an 
obstacle or hears a loud noise (hand-clap), 
Peppy automatically turns to the left. 
Uses 2 AA and 1 9V battery (not included). 

MV-916 $24.95 



Reg. Power Supply 

Model 4A/PS (99/4) 
3 DC Outputs: 

12V@.4A, +5V@1.1A 
-5V @ .2A Highly Filtered 



6.95 




KEYBOARD (99/4) 




48 keys 4" x 10" 6.95 



S2.50 for UPS ground or $3.50 for 
UPS Blue (air) For each additional 
air pound, add S1 for UPS Blue 
shipping and handling California 
residents must include 6% sales 
tax. Bay area and LA residents in- 
clude 6V?% sales tax Prices are 
subject to change without notice 
We are not responsible for typo- 
graphical errors We reserve the 
right to limit quantities and to sub- 
stitute manufacturers All merchan- 
dise subject to prior sale 

ttMiinv friiiuia i ffimi 

HOURS: Mon - Fri 7 30 to 5 00 
Saturdays 1 00 to 3 00 

VISIT OUR RETAIL STORE 

2100 De La Cruz I 
Santa Clara. CA 9su: 



ALL MERCHANDISE IS 

lOO^UARANTEED 



California Digital 

17700 Figueroa Street m Carson, Calif ornia 90248 



SEC RGB. --*, 

color fyCO 



MONITOR 




The NEC JL-1401D is a 13 medium, high resolution RGB monitor 
suitable for use with the Sanyo MBC-550 555 or the IBM PC The 
monitor features a resolution ol 400 dots by 240 lines Colors available 
are Red Green. Blue, Yellow Cyan. Magenta Black and White 
These monitors are currently being used in applications far more 
■ ritical than microcomputers 

The NEC monitor carries the Litton-Monroe label and wab 
scheduled for use m their Office of the Future equipment A change 
m Monroe s marketing strategy has made these units excess inven- 
tory which were sold to California Digital We are offering these prime 
new RGB monitors a! a fraction of their original cost Sanyo com- 
patible NEC 140) S IBM P C Computer compatible NEC MO i PC 

MONITORS 



Zeoitri ZVM122 Amfctv Ptxjspno- I 



BMC T2A 

■ ' ■ : \ 

AMK-300A 

NE ..»•. ■ 

•.i : reta 
-. bw ■ 



■ 
■ is ,. : 
• sa k 

• 
->9 00 



COLOR 

NEC JCt 4010 Medium M^n 13 RGB 

BMC 9191M HGB ae^qneti .for use *.ih .me IBM computer 
NECJC120JOM RGB color monilO' 
NEC JC12' ? coiu' compost i 

■ ■ IS RGB 4 composite surtatHe w IBM PC 
. . ■ill video 



■ • 
.... ic 



NEC- 1401 K 

■ 
BMC9191M 
NEC- 1203 

NECXI215 33900 
ZTH-ZJ35 475 00 

299 00 

- 
-J.-B95 



AM* ' 
K-200 



PRINTERS 



■ 

I !n.,.,;, 

.•'Hinn 

- "'J IH> 

49 OOl 

.. -. CO 

23900 

-9 00 

199 00 



MATRIX PRINTERS 

Star Gemirn ' STR-G10X 

Star Gemmi i5> lOOchai i 

Star Gemini rv STR Dio 

Toshiba Pi v ■ otter qualify TOS-1351 

Okidata82* * - » 

Okidata 9?A parallel interface l€ OKI-92A 

* ■■ i A 

Okidata 64 A A parallel i S paper OKI BJA 

EpsonRX-80 10 t2D Char- •sec EPS-RX80 

n&tractot fps RX80FT 

Epson FX80H will ifaphmw EPS FX80 

FX100FT15 160 char set Aithyraphtra* EPS FX100 

Epson L0 1 b00 1 5 corespondence quality E PS ■ LQ 1 500 

Epson jxeor. EPS-jxao 

Prownlei 8 1 ) H . PRC - • l 

Prownlertl paraflet IS pap-?' |i PRO-.2P 

Dataproducts B • i <)0OLPM DPS B600 
Printronix P300 higfi speed prwuer 300 lines per nwwli 

H noes per minute PT X P600 

WORD PROCESSING PRINTERS 

StarwrnerFi 

NEC8810 - 

'. 

NEC3550 popular prmier deswjned lo» !►>« IBM PC 

NEC2050 desiqnedloi ©M PC^Ocnar sec par NEC 2050 

Silver Reed EXPSOO 1 4 cftar. sec par i. menace SRD EXP500 

Silver Rv I EX) •' pa" .merlace 

Diablo 63( 4 

DiaOto620 proportional spacing horz&verl tad 2i 

Joki6t00 18 char sec - 

JuH.6300 40 

Comre«C>- ^.RX CR2P 



TERMINALS 

Freedom 100 split screen detatctiaole keyboard LIB FllX 

Qume 1 02 green phosphor terminal QUM- 1 OS 

Ampex Dialogue 125 green screen APX D12SG 675.00 

AmpexDialouge 1 75 ambe( screen l*o page (unc key b APX-D175A 7t9 00 

Wyse50 14 green phosphor WYS-50 59500 

Wyse 300 Eight color display split screen WYS-300 1 1 59.00 

Zemin 29 terminal VT 52 compatible- clelatch tile keyboard ZTM-Z29 76500 

Televideo 910 Plus. Wocfc mode 7VI-910P 575 00 

Televideo 925 detachable Keyboard 22 function keys TVI-925 

Televideo 950 graphic char split screen 22 tunc TVt 950 950 00 

Televideo 970. 14 green. 132 column European ■ 1095 00 



COMPUTER PLOTTER 




The Comrex Comscriber I is the ideal solution to make 

short work of translating financial and numeric data into 

a graphic presentation. 

Many ready to run programs such as Lotus 1-2-3. 

Visi-on and Apple business graphics already support 

this plotter. 

The Comscriber I features programmable paper sizes 

up to 8 1 2 by 120 inches, 6 inch per second plot speed 

and 0.004" step size 

Easy to implement Centronics interface allows the 

Comscriber I immediate use with the printer pon of 



most personal computers. 

The Comscriber I is manufactured for Comrex by the 
Enter Computer Corporation. The plotter is marketed 
)y Heath Kit and also sold under Enters own Sweet P 
_abel. This is your opportunity to purchase a graphic 
blotter which was originally priced at S795 for only 

52ta 

\lso available is a support package which includes 
iemonstration software, interface cable, amuiticolor 
pen assortment and a variety of paper and transpa- 
rency material. 



1200 BAUD 

MODEM 

The Team 21 2A offers all the features of the Hayes 1 
Smart Modem 1200 for a fraction of the price Now is 
your opportunity to purchase a 1200 baud modem at 
the price of a 300 baud modem 
California Digital is so confident of your complete 
satisfaction that we will allow the return the Team 
212A and apply the full credit towards the purchase 
of any other 1200 baud modem TEM-SM1200 




1659 00 

<■ 
689 00 



PROMETHEUS 

ProModem 1200 

The Prometheus Promodem 1200 is best value that we have seen m a 
300 1200 baud modem This Hayes compatible modem features 
completely unattended operation, auto answer auto dial and even 
includes rediai number when busy Internal diagnostics makes me 
Promodem 1200 an easy modem to install Help commands, real time 
clock and internal speaker add to the ease of use ol this unit 
An optional processor accessory allows battery back up. extra mem- 
ory space tor storing additional phone numbers messages received, 
and can act as a transfer buffer when exchanging programs 
The Alphanumeric display option allows messages saved to be dis- 
played when they were received diagnostic test results numbers in 
the directory, as well as modem status 



. 

Terminal so-.-. 
Prometheus 1200 super features POM P1200 

Prometneus TZ0OB mie/na. PC 
SKtnaiman Ma-K 12 1 200 baud Hayi 
Mart 

'.• 

Hayes Smanmodem 300 baua only au'Oanswei autudial ■ •■ 

-nooemll lOJAcfj-. 

■grapn time&dale 

U S Robo!ics2?2A $00 >200 - ■ . 

PenmJOO 1200 mdUSIl 

Un.wersat Oata 1 03LP line power dns/«e' •. - 

3;jfa202 1200 baud n^.t rju[ 
• 
NuvdltU" J C ■ 



■ 




TheFSgle HE/2 Computer features a 12 non-glare green phosphor CRT typewriter stylf 
keyboard with separate numeric cluster This unit provides two 5 14 drives lor a 
combined storage capacity of 780 K/Byte The computer contains a 4Mhz Z-80A, DMA 
disk interface, two RS-232C serial ports. Centronics printer interface, along with an 
auxiliary parallel port 

Software included consists of ULTRACALC electronic spread sheet. SPELLBINDER word 
processor CBASIC2, CP/M 2 2 and an exclusive Eagle menu driven utility package 
These units are all factory new and are being offered far below their suggested price of 
S2495 This is your opportunity to purchase a complete CP M system for only S895 



Return of a * 
Smash Hit Sellout 

0RA60M 




Compatible with most Radio Shack Color Computer software Tn..> wor.d famous Dragon 
computer is now available in the United States Manufactured by the Tano Corp under 
license of the British Broadcasting Company The Dragon comes complete with 64 K Byte of 
memory, serial modem port along with a Centronics printer interface This unigue micro- 
computer features Motorola s advanced 6809E microprocessor and comes standard with 
Microsoft Color Basic data base manager and a complete word processing package The 
computer outputs color composite video along with R F video that allows the unit to be used 
tn conjunction with any color television This is the Ideal low cost computer to be used with 
any dial up information system such as the Source Western Union s EasyLmk or any other 



TOLL FREE ORDER LINE 

(800)421-5041 



484 BYT 



TECHNICAL & CALIFORNIA 

(213)217-0500 



California Digital 

7700 Figueroa Street # Carson, Calif ornia 90248 



C.ITOH F10 STARWRITTER 




1 



LETTER 

QUALITY 

PRINTERS 




C. Itoh's STARWRITER F-10 is the answer for the perfect daisy 
wheel printer. The F-10 produces letter quality printing at 40 char- 
acters per second. Auto installs with Wordstar and Perfect Written 
Features extensive built-in word processing functions that allow 
easy adaptability and reduced software complexity. Industry stan- 
dard Centronics interlace provides instant compatibility with all com- 
puters equiped with a parallel printer port. The Starwnter F-10 ac- 



cepts paper up to 1 5 inches in width. 

These printers were originally priced to sell at over S1 400. Through a 

special arrangment California Digital has purchase these units from 

a major computer manufacturer and is offering these printers at a 

fraction of their original cost. 

Options available include tractor feed, buffered memory and an 

assortment of printer cables for a variety of computers. 



L0 MEGABYTE 
WINCHESTER 

SPECIAL 



When the March Issue of 
Byte Magazine went to press 
California Digital was nego- 
tiating for the purchase of 
several thousand 10 Mega- 
byte Winchester disk drives. 
The Manufacturer has asked 
not to advertise their name. 
Please telephone for details 



MEMORY 



4l6£ %Wo"!M50ns\ 

*13> 



Quantity 
1000 



DYNAMIC MEMORY 



4164 ISOnv bJK 128 refresh 
41256 ISOos 256K 
411&150n« 16K 
4116200ns 16K 
4228 tor IBM/AT 
DP8409 dynamic 



ICM-4164150 
ICM-41256TS0 
ICM4116150 
ICM-4I162Q0 
ICM412B150 
ICT 8409 



STATIC MEMORY 



21L02 200ns IK static 
21 L02 450ns IK stat.t 
2112 450ns 2K sialic 
2114 300ns IK i4 
4044TMS «50ns 4K . 1 
5257 300ns 4K . I 
61 16 P4 200ns 2K .8 
6t 16 P3 150ns 2K .8 



2708450ns IK 18 

2716 450ns 2K . B 

2 716TMS450m Tn voltage 

2732 450ns 4K < B 

2 764 350ns BKi 8 

2 7128 350ns 16K >B 



1CM-21L02200 
ICM2IL02450 
ICM 2112450 
ICM-2114300 
ICM-404445G 
ICM- 5257300 
ICM-61 16200 
ICM-61161S0 

EPROMS 

ICE 2708 

ICE 2716 

ICE-2716TMS 

ICE-2732 

ICE-2764 

ICE-27128 



1 J1 

.-> i- 
9 M 

i pa 



i w 
i 19 
. M 

i H 

! m 

L5fl 

UG 



rm 

I K 
I M 



ZJfl 

8 SO 

■ §9 
i K 

it w 

3& 00 



1 HS 

123 

1 .> 
% M 



-; ■■ 
I M 
TM 

3 7', 

i n 

7 M 



< ■ 

7.25 
3.55 
6.25 
| H 




Shustart 

04 WINCHESTER 

These 6.7 Megabyte drives 
are new units recently re- 
leased by the Shugart division 
of Xerox. The Shugart 604 is 
fully 506 industry compatible. 
Each drive is tested before 
shipment and is supplied with 
a 90 day warranty. SHU-604 

Five Inch Winchester Hard Disk Drives 

FUJITSU M2235AS 27 Meg. 999 959 

RODIME R 0-208 53 Meg. 1589 1493 

MAXTOR XT1 065 65 Meg. 1995 1965 

SHUGART 712 13 Meg. Va Ml 495 465 

SHUGART 604 6.7 Meg. 159 149 

TANDON502 10 Meg. 419 395 

TANDON503 19 Meg. 695 675 




Your Choice 
TITA/*55B 55F 

I &r%W48TPI 96TPI 

One Two Ten 
Five Inch Double Sided Drives 

TEACFD55B half height 119 115 109 

TEAC FD55F 96 TPI, half ht. 119 115 109 

CONTROL DATA 9409 PC 169 159 155 

SHUGART SA455 Half Height 119 115 109 

SHUGART SA465 2 Ht.96TPI 119 115 109 

TANDON 1002 full height 149 145 139 

TANDON 101-4 96TPI full ht. 299 289 279 

MITSUBISHI 4851 half height 139 135 129 
MITSUBISHI 4853 96/TPI V 2 Ht. 155 149 139 

MITSUBISHI 4854 8" elec. 295 285 275 

QUME 142 half height 219 205 199 

Eight Inch Single Sided Drives 
SHUGART 801 R 159 159 154 

SIEMENS FDD 100-8 119 115 109 

TANDON 848E-1 Half Height 369 359 349 

Eight Inch Double Sided Drives 
SHUGART SA851R 495 485 475 

QUME 842 QUME TRACK 8 319 319 313 
TANDON 848E-2 Half Height 459 447 435 
REMEX RFD-4000 219 219 209 

MITSUBISHI M2896-63 V 2 Ht. 459 449 409 



Shipping: First five pounds $3.00, each additional pound $.50. 
Foreign orders: 10% shipping, excess will be refunded. 
California residents add 6V 2 °o sales tax. • COD s discouraged. 
Open accounts extended to state supported educational institu- 
tions and companies with a strong "Dun & Bradstreet" rating. 




*IBM and IBM PC are trademarks of Internationa] Business Machines 

486 B YTE • APRIL 1Q8S 



1984 Display Telecommunications Corporation 

Inquiry 1 24 




*IBM and IBM PC are trademarks of International Business Machines 

Inquiry 124 



©1984 Display Telecommunications Corporation 

APRIL 1985 -BYTE 487 



4164 "iBM/l 9.95 



41256 256 ar c 10.95 



STATIC RAMS 




2101 


256x4 


(450ns) 


1.95 


5101 


256x4 


(450nsi(cmos) 


3 95 


2102 1 


1024x4 


(450ns) 


89 


21 02 L 4 


1024x1 


(450ns)(LP> 


99 


2102L-2 


1024x1 


(250ns 1 1 LP) 


1.45 


2125 


1024x1 


(45ns) 


295 


2111 


256x4 


(450ns) 


2.49 


2111L 


256x4 


(450ns) (LP) 


2 95 


2112 


256x4 


(450ns) 


2.99 


2114 


1024x4 


(450ns) 


8 9.95 


2114-25 


1024x4 


(250ns) 


8 10.95 


2114L4 


1024x4 


(450ns)(LP) 


8 12.95 


2114L-3 


1024x4 


(300ns) (LP) 


8 13.45 


2114L 2 


1024x4 


(200ns) (LP) 


8 13.95 


2114L-15 


1024x4 


(150 ns 1 1 LP! 


8 19.95 


TC5514 


1024x4 


<650nsHcmos) 


4.95 


2141 


4096x1 


(200ns) 


2.95 


2147 


4096x1 


(55ns) 


4.95 


2148 


1 024x4 


(70ns) 


4.95 


1 TMS4044 4 


4096x1 


(450ns) 


349 


1 TMS4044-3 


4096x1 


(300ns) 


3.99 


TMS4044 2 


4096x1 


(200ns) 


4.49 


TMS40L44-2 


4096x1 


<200ns)(LP) 


4.95 


UPD410 


4096x1 


(100ns) 


3 95 


MK4118 


1024x8 


(250ns) 


9 9b 


TMM2016 200 


2048x8 


(200ns) 


3 25 


TMM2016 150 


2048x8 


(150ns) 


3 75 


TMM2016 100 


2048x8 


(100ns) 


4.75 


HM6116-4 


2048x8 


( 200ns Memos) 


3.69 


HM6116 3 


2048x8 


(150ns Memos) 


3.95 


HM6116 2 


2048x8 


(120ns)(cmos) 


5.95 


HM6116LP4 


2048x8 


(200ns)(cmos)(LP) 


395 


HM6116LP 3 


2048x8 


(150ns)(cmos)(LP) 


4.25 


HM6116LP2 


2048x8 


(120ns)(cmos)(LP) 


6.95 


TC5516 


2048x8 


(250ns)(cmos) 


9 95 


TMS4016 


2048x8 


(200ns) 


6.95 


Z-6132 


4096x8 


( 300ns) (Qstat) 


34.95 


HM6264P -15 


8192x8 


(150ns)(cmos) 


17.95 


HM6264LP 15 


8192x8 


(150ns)(cmosMLP) 


19.95 


MM6264LP 12 


8192x8 


l120nsHcmos)(LPi 


23.95 


LP=Low power 


Qstat = Quasi -Static 


DYNAMIC RAMS 




TMS4027 


4096x1 


(250ns) 


1 99 


2107 


4096x1 


(200ns) 


1 95 


MM5280 


4096x1 


(300ns) 


1 95 


TMS4050 


4096x1 


(300ns) 


1 95 


UPD411 


4096x1 


(300ns) 


1 95 


TMS4060 


4096x1 


(300 ns) 


1 95 


MK4108 


8192x1 


(200 ns) 


49 


MM5298 


8192x1 


(250ns) 


.49 


4116-300 


16384x1 


(300ns) 


8 6.95 


4116-250 


16384x1 


< 250ns) 


8 6.95 


4116 200 


16384x1 


(200ns) 


8 8.95 


4116-150 


16384x1 


(150ns) 


8 10.95 


4116-120 


16384x1 


(120ns) 


8 1295 


2118 


16384x1 


(150ns)(5v) 


4.95 


MK4332 


32768x1 


(200ns) 


9.95 


4164-200 


65536x1 


(200ns)(5v) 


9 / 19.95 


4164-150 


65536x1 


(150ns)(5v) 


9 21.95 


4164-120 


65536x1 


(120ns)(5v) 


8.95 


MCM6665 


65536x1 


(200ns)(5v) 


4.95 


TNI S4 164-20 


65536x1 


(200ns)(5V) 


4 25 


TMS4164-15 


65536x1 


(ISOnsHSv) 


4.95 


4164 REFRESH 


65536x1 


(150ns)(5V)(REFRESH) 8.95 


I TMS4416-20 


16384x4 


(200ns)(5V) 


8.95 


TNIS4416 15 


16384x4 


(150ns)(5v) 


9.95 


41256 200 


262144x1 


(2O0ns)(5v) 


10.95 


| 41256-150 


262144x1 


(150ns)(5v) 


12.95 


1 5v= Single 5 Vott Supply 


REFRESH=Pin 1 Refresh 



EPROMS 



1702 
2708 
2758 
2716-6 
2716 
2716-1 
TMS2516 
TMS2716 
TMS2532 
2732 
2732A-4 
2732A-35 
2732A 
2732A2 
2764 
2764-250 
2764-200 
TMS2564 
MCM68764 
MCM68766 
27128-45 
27128-30 
27128 
27256 
5 V= Single 



256x8 
1024x8 
1024x8 
2048x8 
2048x8 
2048x8 
2048x8 
2048x8 
4096x8 
4096x8 
4096x8 
4096x8 
4096x8 
4096x8 
8192x8 
8192x8 
8192x8 
8192x8 
8192x8 
8192x8 
16384x8 
16384x8 
16384x8 
32768x8 



(Iim) 

(450ns) 

(450ns)(5V) 

(650ns) 

(450ns)(5V) 

(350ns)(5V) 

(450ns)(5V) 

(450ns) 

(450ns|(5V) 

(450ns)(5V) 

(450ns)(5V)(21V PGM) 4.95 

(350nsM5V)(21VPGM) 4.95 

(250ns)(5V)(21V PGM) 6.95 

(200ns)(5V)(21V PGM) 10.95 



(450ns)(5V) 

(250ns)(5V) 

(200ns)(5V) 

(450nsM5V) 

(450nsM5V)(24 pin) 

(350ns)(5VH24 pin) 

■450ns)(5Vi 

(300nsM5V) 

(250ns)(5V) 

(250nsM5V) 



4.95 
5.25 
8.95 
10.95 
24.95 
42.95 
12.75 
13.50 
13.95 
29.95 



5 Volt Supply 21V PGM -Program at 21 Volts 



Z-80 
2.5 MHz 



• •••HIGH-TECH**** 

/^PD765 $19.95 

FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLER 

• AS USED IN IBM PC 

• SUPPORTS UP TO FOUR 5W* 
OR 8" DISK DRIVES 

• SINGLE OR DOUBLE DENSITY, 
SINGLE OR DOUBLE SIDED 

• DMA OR NON-DMA OPERATION 

• •••SPOTLIGHT**** 



ORDER TOLL FREE 

800-538-5000 
800-662-6279 

(CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS) 



8200 



Z80-CPU 
Z80-CTC 
Z80 DART 
Z80 DMA 
Z80PIO 
280 SIO 
Z80-SIO/1 
Z80SIO 2 
Z80-SIO 9 



4.0 MHz 



Z80ACPU 
Z80A-CTC 
Z80A DART 
Z80ADMA 
Z80A-PIO 
Z80A SIO 
Z80A SIO 1 
Z80A SIO 2 
Z80A SIO 9 



2 95 

395 

895 

i 95 

3.95 

10.95 

10.95 

10.95 

10.95 



6.0 MHz 



Z80B-CPU 
Z80SCTC 
Z80B PIO 
Z80BDART 
2808 -SIO 
ZBOB-SIO 2 



c S5 

9.95 

9.95 

19.95 

29.95 

29.95 



ZILOG 




8202 


24.95 


8203 


39.95 


8205 


350 


8212 


1.80 


8214 


385 


8216 


1 75 


8224 


2 25 


8226 


180 


8228 


3.49 


8237 


13.95 


82375 


15.95 


8238 


4.49 


8243 


4.45 


8250 


10.95 


8251 


3.95 


8251 A 


4 49 


8253 


6 95 


8253 5 


7 95 


8255 


449 


8255 5 


5 25 


8257 


7 95 


82575 


S 95 


8259 


690 


8259 5 


7.50 


8271 


79.95 


8272 


19.95 


8274 


39.95 


8275 


29.95 


8279 


6.95 


82795 


7 95 


8282 


650 


8283 


6.50 


8284 


5.50 


8286 


6.50 


8287 


6.50 


8288 


14.95 


8289 


49.95 


8292 


1495 



CRYSTALS 



| 32.768 KHz 

1.0 MHz 

1.8432 

2.0 

2.097152 

2.4575 

3.2768 

3.579545 

4.0 

4.032 

5.0 

5.0688 

5.185 

5.7143 

6.0 

6.144 

6.5536 

8.0 
10.0 

10.738635 
14.31818 
15.0 
16.0 
17.430 
18.0 
18.432 
20.0 
22.1184 
24.0 
L 32.0 



MC14411 

BR1941 

4702 

COM5016 

COM8116 

MM5307 



FUNCTION 



MC4024 
LM566 
XR2206 
1 8038 



: 1771 

; 1791 

1793 

1795 

1797 

2791 

2793 

2795 

2797 

6843 

8272 

UPD765 

MB8H>6 

MB8877 

1691 
[2143 



GENERATORS 1 
BIT RATE 



11.95 
11.95 
12.95 
16.95 
10.95 
10.95 



DISK 

I CONTROLLERS 



15.95 
23.95 
23.95 
23.95 
23.95 
39.95 
39.95 
39.95 
39.95 
34.95 
19.95 
19.95 
29.95 
34.95 
7.95 
7.95 j 



KEYBOARD 
CHIPS 

I AV5 2376 11.95 

AV5 3600STD 11.95 

1 AYS 3600 PRO 11.95 J 



CLOCK 
CIRCUITS 

I MM5314 

MM5369 

MM5369-EST 

MM5375 

MM58167 

MM58174 
I MSM5832 



CRYSTAL 


OSCILLATORS 


1.0MHz 7.95 


8 


1.8432 7.95 


100 


2.0 795 


12.0 


2.4576 7.95 


150 


2.5 7.95 


16.0 


4.0 7.95 


18.432 


5.0688 7.95 


20.0 


6.0 7.95 


24.0 


6.144 7.95 





74LS00 



CRT 




CONTROLLERS 


6845 


12.95 


68B45 


19.95 


6847 


11.95 


68047 


24.95 


HD46505SP 


15.95 


MC1372 


6.95 


8275 


29.95 


7220 


3995 


CRT5027 


19.95 


CRT5037 


34.95 


TMS9918A 


39.95 


DP8350 


49.95 



74LS00 

74LS01 

74LS02 

74LS03 

74LS04 

74LS05 

74LS08 

74LS09 

74LS10 

74LS11 

74LS12 

74LS13 

74LS14 

74LS15 

74LS20 

74LS21 

74LS22 

74LS26 

74LS27 

74LS28 

74LS30 

74LS32 

74LS33 

74LS37 

74LS38 

74LS40 

74LS42 

74LS47 

74LS48 

74LS49 

74LS51 

74LS54 

74LS55 

74LS63 

74LS73 

74LS74 

74LS75 

74LS76 

74LS78 

74LS83 

74LS85 

74LS86 

74LS90 

74LS91 

74LS92 

74LS93 

74LS95 

74LS96 

74LS107 

74LS109 

74LS112 

74LS113 

74LS114 

74LS122 

74 LSI 23 

74LS124 

74LS125 

74 LSI 26 

74LS132 

74LS133 

74LS136 

74LS137 

74LS138 

74LS139 

74LS145 

74 LSI 47 

74 LSI 48 

74LS151 

74LS153 

74 LSI 54 

74LS155 

74LS156 

74LS157 

74LS158 

74LS160 

74LS161 

74LS162 

74LS163 

74 LSI 64 

74LS165 

74LS166 

74 LSI 68 

74LS169 

74LS170 

74LS173 

74LS174 

74LS175 

74LS181 



59 



74LS189 8.95 

74LS190 .89 

74LS191 .89 

74LS192 .79 

74LS193 .79 

74LS194 .69 

74LS195 69 

74LS196 .79 

74LS197 .79 

74LS221 .89 

74LS240 .95 

74LS241 99 

74LS242 .99 

74LS243 99 

74LS244 1 .29 

74LS245 1.49 
74LS247 
74LS248 
74LS249 
74LS251 
74LS253 
74LS257 
74LS258 

74LS259 2.75 

74LS260 .59 

74LS261 2 25 

74LS266 .55 

74LS273 1.49 

74LS275 3 35 

74LS279 .49 

74LS280 1.98 

74LS283 .69 

74LS290 89 

74LS293 89 

74LS295 99 

74LS298 .89 

74LS299 1.75 

74LS322 595 

74LS323 3.50 

74LS324 1.75 

74LS348 2 50 

74LS352 1.29 

74LS353 129 

74LS363 1.35 

74LS364 1 95 

74LS365 49 

74LS366 .49 

74LS367 .45 

74LS368 .45 

74LS373 1.39 

74LS374 1.39 

74LS375 .95 

74LS377 1.39 

74LS378 1.18 

74LS379 1.35 

74LS385 3.90 

74LS386 45 

74LS390 1.19 

74LS393 1.19 

74LS395 1.19 

74LS396 1.89 

74LS399 1.49 

74LS424 3.95 

74LS447 .95 

74LS490 1.95 

74LS540 195 

74LS541 1 95 

74LS624 3 99 

74LS640 2 20 

74LS645 2.20 

74LS668 169 

74LS669 1.89 

74LS670 149 

74LS674 14.95 

74LS682 320 

74LS683 3.20 

74LS684 3.20 

74LS685 3.20 

74LS688 2.40 

74LS689 3.20 

81LS95 1.49 

81LS96 1.49 
25LS2518 4.13 
25LS2521 2.80 
25LS2538 3.74 
25LS2569 2.80 

26LS31 2.19 

26LS32 2 .19 . 



SJKJDR Microdevices 

■ II 1224 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128 
800-538-5000 • 800-662-6279 (CA) • (408) 995-5430 
FAX (408) 275-8415 • Telex 171-110 



RETAIL STORE - 1256 S. BASCOM AVENUE 
HOURS: M-W-F, 9-5 TU-TH, 9-9 SAT, 10-3 



PLEASE USE YOi 



JSTOMER NUMBER WHEN ORDERING 



Copyright 1985 JDR Mic 



TERMS: Minimum order S10.00. For shipping and handling include 
S2.50 for UPS Ground and S3.50 tor UPS Air. Orders over 1 lb. and 
foreign orders may require additional shipping charges - please 
contact our sales department lor the amount. CA. residents n 
include 6% sales tax. Bay Area and LA residents include 6W»/ 8 . . 
merchandise is warranted tor 90 days unless otherwise stated. Pric 
are subject to change without notice. We are not responsible tor 
typographical errors. We reserve the right to limit quantities and to 
substitute manufacturer. All merchandise subject to prior sate. 



488 B YT £ • APRIL 1 98 5 



Inquiry 213 



Ill 


mi 


Ml 


R/l 


ip.i 


111 


BKX8 STATIC 1 " 


f Q 


R CC|QCQ SP 


EECH Q| 


Q Q 1 


1 


m 


ivi 


Oil 


W 


\r m 


lu 


150ns 


1 ■ 


r.O 


3 OOl L.VO SYNT 


HESIZER Oi 


D.X3\ 


I 








74S00 








CMOS 




HIGH SPEED CMOS 


RE V G°U L l 


r /^& b 






74S00 


32 


74S135 


.89 


74S244 


2.20 


■ 4000 .29 


4531 


.95 


A new family of high speed CMOS logic featuring 


-ATORS 1 




74S02 


35 


74S138 


85 


74S251 


.95 


■ 4001 .25 


4532 


1.95 


the speed of low power Schottkv (8ns typical gate prop 


TO 220 CAS* * . < 1 




74S03 


35 


74S139 


85 


74S253 


.95 


■ 4002 25 


4538 


1.95 


agatjon delay), combined with the advantages of CMOS 










74S04 


35 


74S140 


55 


74S257 


.95 


■ 4006 .89 


4539 


1.95 


very low power consumption, superior noise immunity. 


7805T .75 


7905T 


.85 1 




74S05 


35 


74S151 


95 


74S258 


.95 


■ 4007 .29 


4541 


2.64 


and improved output drive. 


7808T .75 


7908T 


.85 1 




74S08 
74S09 


35 

40 


74S153 
74 SI 57 


95 
95 


74S260 
74S273 


.79 
2.45 


■ 4008 .95 

■ 4009 39 


4543 
4553 


1.19 
5.79 


74HC00 


781 2T .75 
781 5T .75 


791 2T 
791 5T 


.85 1 
.85 | 




74S10 


35 


74S158 


95 


74S274 


19.95 


■ 4010 .45 


4555 


95 


74HC: Operate at CMOS logic levels and are ideal 


7824T .75 


7924T 


.85 1 




74S11 


35 


74S161 


1.95 


74S275 


19.95 


■ 4011 .25 


4556 


.95 


lor new, all-CMOS designs. 


TO-3 CASE P/ K 






74S15 


35 


74S162 


1.95 


74S280 


1.95 


■ 4012 .25 


4558 


2.45 


74HC0O .59 74HC175 99 


7805 K 1 .39 


7905K 
791 2K 
791 5K 
7924K 


1.49 1 
1.49 | 
1.49 | 
1.49 I 




74S20 


35 


74S163 


1.95 


74S283 


3.29 


■ 4013 .38 


4560 


4.25 


74HC02 .59 74HC193 1.25 


781 2K 1 39 
781 5K 1.39 
7824K 1.39 




74S22 


35 


74S168 


3.95 


74S287 


1.90 


■ 4014 .79 


4569 


3.49 


74HC04 .59 74HC194 1.04 




74S30 


35 


74 S 169 


3.95 


74S288 


1.90 


■ 4015 .39 


4581 


1.95 


74HC08 .59 74HC195 1.09 




74S32 


40 


74S174 


.95 


74S289 


6.98 


■ 4016 .39 


4582 


1.95 


74HC10 59 74HC238 1.35 




74S37 


88 


74S175 


.95 


74S299 


7.35 


■ 4017 .69 


4584 


.75 


74HC11 .59 74HC240 1.89 


TO-92 CASE P K | 




74S38 


85 


74S180 


11.95 


74S301 


6.95 


■ 4018 .79 


4585 


.75 


74HC14 .79 74HC241 1.89 


78L05 .69 


79 LOS 


79 1 




74S40 


35 


74S181 


3.95 


74S373 


2.45 


■ 4019 .39 


45151 


12.95 


74HC20 .59 74HC242 1.89 


78L12 .69 


79L12 


.79 1 




74S51 


35 


74S182 


2.95 


74S374 


2.45 


■ 4020 .75 


4702 


12.95 


74HC27 .59 74HC243 1.89 


78L15 .69 


79L15 


.79 1 




74S64 


40 


74S185 


16.95 


74S381 


7.95 


■ 4021 .79 


4724 


1.50 


74HC30 59 74HC244 1.89 


ATUCD \lf\ 








74S65 


40 


74S188 


1.95 


74S387 


1.95 


■ 4022 .79 


74C00 


.35 


74HC32 .69 74HC245 1.89 


Ul ntn VUlihuc ncua ■ 




74S74 


50 


74S189 


6 95 


74S399 


2.95 


■ 4023 .29 


74C02 


.35 


74HC51 .59 74HC251 89 


78M05C Svorr V 


»np TO 220 


35 1 




74S85 


1 99 


74S194 


1.49 


74S412 


2.98 


■ 4024 .65 


74C04 


.35 


74HC74 .75 74HC257 .85 


LM323K 5vott 3amp TO 3 


4.95 | 




74S86 


50 


74S195 


1 49 


74S470 


6.95 


■ 4025 .29 


74C08 


.35 


74HC75 .85 74HC259 1.39 


LM338K Adf, Semp TO-3 


3.95 1 




74S112 


50 


74S196 


1.49 


74S471 


4.95 


■ 4026 1.65 


74C10 


.35 


74HC85 1.35 74HC273 1.89 


78H05K Svolt Samp TO 3 


9.95 | 




74S1 1 3 


50 


74S197 


1.49 


74S472 


4.95 


■ 4027 .45 


74C14 


.59 


74HC86 .69 74HC299 4.99 


78H12K 12volt5amp TO 3 


9.95 1 




74 S "I 14 


55 


74S201 


6.95 


74S474 


4.95 


■ 4028 .69 


74C20 


.35 


74HC93 1.19 74HC367 .99 


78P05K 5volt 1 


Oemp TO-3 


14.95 1 




74S124 
74S132 
74S133 


2 75 
1.24 

45 


74S225 
74S226 
74S240 


7.95 
3.99 
2.20 


74 S 570 
74S571 
74S573 


2.95 
2.95 
9.95 


■ 4029 .79 

■ 4030 .39 

■ 4034 1.95 


74C30 
74C32 
74C42 


.35 
.39 
1.29 


74HC125 1.19 74HC373 2.29 
74HC132 1.19 74HC374 2.29 
74HC138 .99 74HC393 1.39 


UA78S40 FAIRCHILD DIP 


1.95 J 










74S1 34 


50 


74S241 


2.20 


87S181 


16.25 


■ 4035 .85 


74C48 


1.99 


74HC139 .99 74HC401 7 1 .99 


LI IMF 














87S185 


16.95 M 


■ 4040 .75 


74C73 


.65 


74HC151 .89 74HC4020 1.39 
74HC153 89 74HC4024 1.59 
74HC154 2.49 74HC4040 1.39 
74HC157 .89 74HC4049 .89 


LM301 .34 


NE570 


3.95 1 














■ 4041 .75 

■ 4042 .69 
4043 .85 


74C74 
74C76 
74C83 


.65 
.80 


LM301 H .79 
LM307 .45 


NE571 
NE590 


2.95 | 
2.50 1 














1.95 


LM308 .69 
LM308H 115 
LM309H 1.95 
LM309K 1 .25 
LM310 1.75 


NE592 .98 1 
LM709 .59 | 
LM710 .75 | 
LM711 .79 | 
LM723 .49 1 
LM723H .55 1 
LM733 98 1 
LM741 .35 1 
LM741N-14 .35 1 
LM741H .40 1 
LM747 .69 1 
LM748 59 1 
LM1014 1.19 1 
LM1303 1.95 1 
LM1310 1.49 1 
MC1330 1.69 1 
MC1349 1.89 1 
MCI 350 1.19 1 
MC1358 1.69 1 
MC1372 6.95 I 
LM1414 1.59 1 
LM1458 .59 1 
LM1488 .69 1 
LM1489 .69 1 
LM1496 .85 1 
LM1558H 3.10 1 
LM1800 2.37 1 
LM1812 8.25 1 
LM1830 "* cn 








7400 






4044 .79 
4046 .85 


74C85 
74C86 


1.95 
.39 


74HC161 1.15 74HC4050 .89 
74HC164 1.25 74HC406O 1.29 




7400 


19 


7483 


50 


74172 


5.95 


4047 .95 


74C89 


4.50 


74HC166 2.95 74HC4511 2.39 




7401 


19 


7485 


59 


74173 


.75 


4048 .69 


74C90 


1.19 


74HC174 .99 74HC4538 2.29 




7402 
7403 


19 

19 


7486 
7489 


35 
2.15 


74174 
74175 


.89 
.89 


4049 .35 

4050 .35 


74C93 
74C95 


1.75 
.99 


74HCT00 


LM311 64 
LM311H .89 
LM312H 1.75 
LM317K 3.95 
LM317T 1.19 
LM318 1.49 
LM318H 1.59 
LM319M 1.90 
LM319 1.25 
LM320 see7900 
LM322 1.65 
LM323K 4.95 
LM324 .59 
LM329 .6S 
LM331 3.95 
LM334 1.19 
LM335 1.40 
LM336 1 .75 
LM337T 1.95 
LM337K 3.95 
LM338K 3.95 
LM339 .99 
LM340 see? 8 00 
LM348 .99 
LM350K 4.95 
LM350T 4.60 
LM358 .69 
LM359 1.79 
LM376 3.75 
LM377 1.95 
LM378 2.50 
LM379 4.50 
LM380 .89 

■ LM380N-8 1.10 

■ LM381 1.60 

■ LM382 1.60 

■ LM383 1.95 

■ LM384 1.95 

■ LM386 .89 

■ LM387 1.40 

■ LM389 1.35 

■ LM390 1.95 

■ LM392 .69 

■ LM393 1.29 

■ LM394H 4.60 

■ LM399H 5.00 

■ NE531 2.95 

■ NE555 .34 

■ NE556 .65 

■ NE558 1.50 

■ NE564 2.95 

■ LM565 .99 




7404 


19 


7490 


35 


74176 


.89 


4051 .79 


74C150 


5.75 


74HCT: Direct, drop-in replacements for LS TTLand 




7405 


25 


7491 


40 


74177 


.75 


4052 1.99 


74C151 


2.25 


can be intermixed with 74LS in the same circuit. 




7406 


29 


7492 


50 


74178 


1.15 


4053 .79 


74C154 


3.25 


74HCT00 .69 74HCT175 1.09 




7407 


29 


7493 


35 


74179 


1.75 


4060 .89 


74C157 


1.75 


74HCT02 .69 74HCT193 1.39 




7408 


24 


7494 


65 


74180 


.75 


4066 .39 


74C160 


1.19 


74HCT04 .69 74HCT194 1.19 




7409 


19 


7495 


55 


74181 


2.25 


4068 .39 


74C161 


1.19 


74HCT08 .69 74HCT195 1.29 




7410 


19 


7496 


70 


74182 


.75 


4069 .29 


74C162 


1.19 


74HCT10 .69 74HCT238 1.49 




7411 


25 


7497 


2.75 


74184 


2.00 


4070 .35 


74C163 


1.19 


74HCT11 .69 74HCT240 2.19 




7412 


30 


74100 


1.75 


74185 


2.00 


4071 .29 


74C164 


1.39 


74HCT14 .89 74HCT241 2.19 




7413 


35 


74105 


1.14 


74189 


2.99 


4072 .29 


74C165 


2.00 


74HCT20 .69 74HCT242 2.19 




7414 


49 


74107 


30 


74190 


1.15 


4073 .29 


74C173 


.79 


74HCT27 .69 74HCT243 2.19 




7416 


25 


74109 


45 


74191 


1.15 


4075 .29 


74C174 


1.19 


74HCT30 .69 74HCT244 2.19 




7417 


25 


74110 


45 


74192 


.79 


4076 .79 


74C175 


1.19 


74HCT32 .79 74HCT245 2.19 




7420 


19 


74111 


.55 


74193 


.79 


4077 .59 


74C192 


1.49 


74HCT51 .69 74HCT251 1.09 




7421 


35 


74116 


1.55 


74194 


.85 


4078 .29 


74C193 


1.49 


74HCT74 .85 74HCT257 .99 




7422 


35 


74120 


1.20 


74195 


.85 


4081 .29 


74C195 


1.39 


74HCT75 .95 74HCT259 1.59 




7423 


29 


74121 


29 


74196 


.79 


4082 .29 


74C200 


5.75 


74HCT85 1.49 74HCT273 2.09 




7425 


29 


74122 


45 


74197 


75 


4085 .95 


74C221 


1.75 


74HCT86 .79 74HCT299 5.25 




7426 


29 


74123 


49 


74198 


1.35 


4086 .95 


74C244 


2.25 


74HCT93 1.29 74HCT367 1.09 




7427 


29 


74125 


45 


74199 


1.35 


4093 .49 


74C373 


2.45 


74HCT125 1.29 74HCT373 2.49 




7428 


45 


74126 


45 


74221 


1.35 


4094 2.99 


74C374 


2.45 


74HCT132 1.29 74HCT374 2.49 




7430 


19 


74128 


55 


74246 


1.35 


4098 2.49 


74C901 


.39 


74HCT138 1.15 74HCT393 1.59 




7432 


29 


74132 


45 


74247 


1.25 


4099 1.95 


74C902 


.85 


74HCT139 1.15 74HCT4017 2.19 


LM1871 

LM1872 

LM1877 

LM1889 

LM1896 

ULN2003 

XR2206 

LM2877 

LM2878 

LM290C 

LM2901 

MPQ2907 

LM2917 

MC3487 

LM39O0 

LM3905 

LM3909 

LM3911 

LM3914 

LM3915 

LM3916 

MC4024 

MC4044 

RC4136 

RC4151 

LM4250 

LM45O0 

RC4558 


5 49 1 

5.49 1 
3.52 1 
1.95 1 
1.75 1 
1.29 1 
3.75 1 
2.05 1 
2.25 1 

.85 | 

1 00 I 
1.95 | 

2 95 I 
2.95 I 

.59 | 
1.25 | 

.98 | 
2.25 | 
3.95 | 
3.95 | 
3.95 | 
3.95 | 

4.50 | 
1.25 | 

3 95 | 
1.75 | 
3.25 | 

.69 | 




7433 


45 


74136 


50 


74248 


1,85 


14409 12.95 


74C903 


.85 


74HCT151 1.05 74HCT4020 1.59 




7437 


29 


74141 


65 


74249 


1 95 


14410 12.95 


74C905 10.95 


74HCT153 1.05 74HCT4024 1.79 




7438 


29 


74142 


2.95 


74251 


75 


14411 11.95 


74C906 


.95 


74HCT154 2.99 74HCT4040 1.59 




7439 


.79 


74143 


4.95 


74259 


2.25 


14412 12.95 


74C907 


1.00 


74HCT1 57 .99 74HCT4049 .99 




7440 


19 


74144 


2.95 


74265 


1.35 


14419 7.95 


74C908 


2.00 


74HCT161 1.29 74HCT4050 .99 




7442 


49 


74145 


60 


74273 


1.95 


14433 14.95 


74C909 


2.75 


74HCT164 1.39 74HCT4060 1.49 




7443 


65 


74147 


1.75 


74276 


1.25 


14490 4.95 


74C910 


9.95 


74HCT166 3.05 74HCT4511 2.69 




7444 


69 


74148 


1.20 


74278 


3.11 


4502 .95 


74C911 


8.95 


74HCT174 1.09 74HCT4538 2 59 




7445 
7446 
7447 
7448 
7450 


69 
69 
69 
69 
.19 


74150 
74151 
74152 
74153 
74154 


1.35 

55 

65 

55 

1.25 


74279 
74283 
74284 
74285 
74290 


.75 
2.00 
3.75 
3.75 

.95 


4503 65 

4507 1.25 

4508 1.95 

4510 .85 

4511 .85 


74C912 8.95 ■ 
74C914 1.95 ■ 
74C915 1.19 ■ 
74C918 2.75 ■ 
74C920 17.95 ■ 


RSPECTRONICS I 




7451 
7453 
7454 


.23 
23 

23 


74155 
74156 
74157 


75 
65 
55 


74293 
74298 
74351 


.75 

.85 

2.25 


4512 .85 

4514 1.25 

4515 1.79 


74C921 15.95 ■ 
74C922 4.49 ■ 
74C923 4.95 ■ 


U CORPORATION I 




7460 
7470 
7472 
7473 


23 
35 
29 
34 


74159 
74160 
74161 
74162 


1.65 

85 
69 
85 


74365 
74366 
74367 
74368 


.65 
.65 
.65 
.65 


4516 1.55 

4518 .89 

4519 .39 

4520 .79 


74C925 
74C926 
74C927 
74C928 


5.95 ■ 
7.95 ■ 
7.95 ■ 
7.95 ■ 


EPROM ERASERS 

Capacity Intensity 
Timer Chip (uW Cm'! 




7474 


.33 


74163 


69 


74376 


2.20 


4521 4.99 


74C929 19.95 ■ 


PE 14 9 8,000 S83.00 




7475 


45 


74164 


85 


74390 


1.75 


4522 1 .25 


74C930 


4.95 ■ 


PE -14T x 9 8.000 9119.00 




7476 


35 


74165 


.85 


74393 


1.35 


4526 1.25 


80C95 


.85 ■ 


PE-24T x 12 9,600 SI 75 00 




7480 


59 


74166 


1.00 


74425 


3.15 


4527 1.95 


80C96 


.95 ■ 


PL 265T x 30 9,600 S 2 55 00 




7481 


1.10 


74167 


2.96 


74426 


.85 


4528 1.19 


80C97 


.95 ■ 


PR-125T x 25 17,000 »349.00 




L 74S2 


.95 


74170 


1.65 


74490 


2.55 


4529 2.95 


80C98 


120 ■ 


. PR-320T x 42 17,000 »595.00 J 
















































■ LM566 1.49 LM13600 1.49 1 

■ LM567 89 LM 13700 1.45 1 

■ H=TO-5 CAN. K=TO-3. T=TO-220 1 




TRANSISTORS 




IC 




"INTERFACE" 

8T26 1.59 


r DATAACCf 

ADG0800 15.55 




r 9000 ^ 

9304 .95 


W SOUND | 
I CHIPS 1 

1 76477 3 95 1 




2N918 

MPS918 


50 
25 


2N3772 
2N3903 


1.85 
25 


SOCK 


rs 


8T28 
8T95 


1.98 
.89 


ADC0804 3.49 
ADC 0809 4.49 




9316 1.00 
9328 1.49 


1 RCA 

■ CA3023 2.75 CA3083 

■ CA3039 1.29 CA3086 

■ CA3046 1.25 CA3089 

■ CA3059 2.90 CA3096 

■ CA3060 2 90 CA3130 

■ CA3065 1.75 CA3140 

■ CA3080 1 10 CA3146 

■ CA3081 1.65 CA3160 

■ CA3082 1.65 CA3183 


1.55 1 
80 | 
2.99 | 
3.49 | 
1.30 | 
1.15 | 
1.85 | 
1.19 | 
.99 1 




2N2102 
2N2218 
2N2218A 
2 N 22 19 
2N2219A 


75 
50 
50 
50 
50 


2N3904 
2N3906 
2N4122 
2N4123 

2N4249 


.10 
.10 
.25 
.25 
.25 


8 PIN 
14 PIN 
16 PIN 


1-93 
ST .13 
ST .IB 
ST .11 


100 

.11 

.12 
.13 


8T96 

8T97 

8T98 

DM8131 

OP8304 


.89 
.89 

89 
2.95 
2 29 


ADC0816 14.95 
ADC0817 9.95 
ADC0831 8 95 
DAC0800 4.49 
DAC0806 1.95 




9334 2.50 
9368 3.95 
9401 9.95 

9601 .75 

9602 1.50 


■ 76488 5.95 1 

■ 76489 8.95 1 

■ SSI-263 39.95 1 

■ AY 3- 89 10 12.95 1 

■ AY3 8912 12.95 1 




2 N 222 2 
PN2222 
MPS2369 

2N2484 


2 5 
10 
25 
25 


2N4304 
2N4401 
2N4402 
2N4403 


.75 
.25 
25 
.25 
1.00 


18 PIN 
20 PIN 
22 PIN 
24 PIN 
28 PIN 


ST 2C 
ST .29 
ST .30 
ST 3C 
ST .40 


.18 
.27 
.27 
.27 
32 


OS8833 
DS8835 
DS8836 
DS8837 
DS8838 


2.25 

1.99 

.99 

1.65 

1.30 


DAC0808 2.95 
DAC1020 8.25 
DAC1021 7.95 
DAC1022 5.95 
MC1408L6 1.95 




9637 2.95 
96S02 1.95 < 


■ MC3340 1.49 1 
MSPIOOO 39^001 




2N2905 


.50 


2N4857 




^OPTaiSOLATORS ^1 


1 Tl 






2 N 290 7 
PN2907 
2N3055 
3055T 


25 
.13 
.79 

69 


PN4916 

2N5086 

PN5129 

PN5139 

2N5209 

2N6028 

2N6043 

2N6045 

MPS A05 

MPS A06 

MPS-A13 

MPS-A55 


.25 
.25 
.25 
.25 
,25 
.35 
1.75 
1 75 
.25 
.25 
.40 
.25 


40 PIN ST .49 
64 PIN ST 4.25 

ST=SOLDERT) 


39 
CALL 

ML 


INTERSIL 

ICL7106 9.95 


MC1408L8 2.95 

EXAR 




4N26 100 MCA 7 4.25 1 
4N27 110 MCA 255 1 75 I 
4N28 69 IL-1 1.25 1 


1 TL494 4.20 

■ TL496 1.65 

■ TL497 3.25 


75365 
75450 
75451 


1.95 I 
.59 | 
.39 | 




2N3393 

2N3414 

2N3563 

2N3565 

PN3565 

MPS3638 

MPS3640 

PN3643 


30 
25 
40 
40 
25 
25 
25 
25 








ICL7107 


12.95 


XR2206 3.75 




4N33 175 I LA 30 1.25 1 


■ 75107 1.49 


75452 


39 | 










ICL7660 


2.95 


XR2207 3.75 




4N35 1.25 ILQ-74 2.75 1 


■ 75108 1.49 


75453 


.39 | 




8 PIN WW .59 


.49 


ICL8038 


3.95 


XR2208 3.75 




4N37 1.25 H11C5 1.25 1 


■ 75110 1.95 


75454 


.39 | 




14 PIN 


WW .69 


.52 


ICM7207A 


5.59 


XR2211 5.25 




MCT2 1.00 TIL-111 1.00 1 


■ 75150 1.95 


75477 


1.29 | 




16 PIN WW .69 
18 PIN WW .99 
20 PIN WW 1.09 
22 PIN WW 1.39 
24 PIN WW 1.49 


.58 

90 

.98 

1.28 

1.35 


ICM7208 


15.95 


XR2240 3.25 




MCT6 1.50 TIL- 11 3 1.75 J 


■ 75154 1.95 

■ 75160 4.95 

■ 75188 1.25 

■ 75189 1.25 


75491 
75492 
75493 
75494 


.79 | 
79 1 
.89 | 
.89 1 


1 ' m w 


ri t ing 


to thank you a 


B 


ain for the out-standing 




PN3644 

MPS3704 

MPS3706 


25 
15 
15 


MPU-131 

TIP29 

TIP31 


.99 
.65 

.75 


28 PIN WW 1.69 
40 PIN WW 1.99 


1.49 
1.80 


3pi ri t 
our tel 


of ser% 
ephone 


rice to customers with which you handled 
order today. The high level of service 


1 Bl FET 

■ TL066 .99 LF347 


2.19 I 








TIP32 


.79 


WW WIRE WR 


fcp J 








■ TL071 .79 


LF351 


.60 | 


















or i enta 


it i on y< 


)u exhibi t is rarely found these days . 


■ TL072 1.19 

■ TL074 2.19 


LF353 
LF355 


1.00 1 
1.10 | 


























I 








...It 
electrc 


i s grat 
mic con 


i fy ing to find you as a suppl ier who stocks 
iponents we often find difficultto obtain 


■ TL081 .79 

■ TL082 1.19 


LF356 
LF357 


1.10 1 
140 1 




r 




1 


^^af^h^gjfj 




. 


■mr. ■ 


/M 




MaslerCa 


nl 










■ TL083 1.19 


LF411 


1.29 | 




* 


Kx& 


SB 


! 


1 




... we w 


ill sur 
Copy 


ely look on you as a preferred suppl ier . 


■ TL084 2.19 


LP412 


1.99 1 




L 




I 




















right 1985 


JDR Mlcroc 


Si 


ices 


— V- iv- riuu-H 



Inquiry 213 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 489 



RS232 O OR 

FEMALE SOLDER CUP L,L\3 



DB25P MALE SOLDER CUP 



BARGAIN HUNTERS CORNER 



DYNAMIC RAMS 




41256 256 K JkOOfM 


$10.95 


4164 0^»T* 200n» 9 


$19.95 


S>ATICRAfVtS 




HM6264 8R$ ttMm* OmQA 


$17.95 


TMM2016 2%U8 200m 


$3.25 


HM6116 3Xx8 SOOns CMOS 


$3.69 


EPR0HS 

27128 16XX8 MR 
2764 - Kx8 4$0ns 
2732 ^flfcjr' 450ns 




S13.95 


$4.95 
$4.25 



MATH CO-PROCESSOR CHIPS 

8087-3 INTFL $129.00 

8087-6 INTEL $119.00 

SPECIALS ENDS 4/30/85 



RF 
MODULATOR 

(ASTECUM1082) 

QUANTITIES LIMITED 

* PRESET TOCHANNEL3 
. USE TO BUILD TV- 
COMPUTER INTERFACE 

• 5 VOLT OPERATION 

$6.95 




HARD TO FIND 
"SNAPABLE" HEADERS 

Can easily be snapped apart to make 
any size header, all with .1" centers 
1x40 STRAIGHT LEAD 1.99 

1x40 RIGHT ANGLE 1.49 

2x40 STRAIGHT LEAD 2.49 

2x40 RIGHT ANGLE 2.99 

SHORTING BLOCKS 

SPACED AT .1" CENTERS 

| "b IDEAL FOR DISK DRIVES 

Hi OR ANY .1" HEADER 

5 1.00, 



DIP 
SWITCHES 

I 4 POSITION 85 

5 POSITION 

6 POSITION 

7 POSITION 
| 8 POSITION 
.10 POSITION 1.29 J 



VIDEO RFOUT 



EDGECARD 
CONNECTORS 



S-100 3.95 
S 100 4.95 



S-100 ST 
S 100 WW 
72 PIN ST 
72 PIN WW 
62 PIN ST IBM PC 4.95 
50 PIN ST APPLE 4.95 
44 PIN ST 
L 44 PIN WW 



36 PIN CENTRONICS 



IDCEN36 
IDCEN36 
k CEN36 



RIBBON CABLE MALE 
RIBBON CABLE FEMALE 
SOLDER CUP MALE 



DIP CONNECTORS 



DESCRIPTION 


ORDER BY 


CONTACTS 


8 


14 


16 


18 


20 


22 


24 


28 


40 


HIGH RELIABILITY TOOLED 
ST IC SOCKETS 


AUGATxxST 


,99 


.99 


.99 


1.69 


1.89 


1.89 


1.99 


2.49 


2.99 


HIGH RELIABILITY TOOLED 
WW IC SOCKETS 


AUGATxxWW 


1.30 


1 80 


2.10 


2.40 


2 50 


2.90 


3 .15 


3.70 


5 40 


COMPONENT CARRIES 
{DIP HEADERS) 


ICCxx 


.49 


59 


69 


.99 


.99 


99 


99 


1.09 


1.49 


RIBBON CABLE 
DIP PLUGS (IDC) 


IDPxx 




.95 


95 








1 75 




2.95 



FOR ORDERING INSTRUCTIONS SEE IDC CONNECTORS BELOW 



EMI FILTER 

• MAJOR MANUFACTURER 

• LOW COST 

• FITS LC-HP BELOW 

$4.95 
LINE CORDS 

LC-2 2 CONDUCTOR 6 ft 



CAPACITORS 

TANTALUM 

15V 40 47//f 35V 50 

15V .70 1.0 35V 45 

15V .80 2.2 35V .65 

15V 1.35 4.7 35V .85 

35V .40 10 35V 1.00 



LC-3 3 CONDUCTOR 6 ft 


99 1 






DISC 






LC-HP 3 CONDUCTOR WITH STANDARD | 


10pl 


50V 


.05 


560 


50V 


05 


FEMALE SOCKET 6 ft 


1 49 ■ 


22 


50V 


05 


680 


50 V 


05 


LC-CIR CIGARETTE LIGHTER 




25 


50V 


05 


820 


50V 


05 


PLUG WITH 6 ft COILED CORD 


295 1 


27 


50V 


05 


001*jf 


50 V 


05 






33 


50V 


05 


.0015 


50V 


05 


MUFFIN FANS 




47 


50V 


05 


0022 


50V 


05 


4.68•• SQUARE 


14.95 1 


56 


50V 


05 


.005 


50V 


05 


3" SQUARE 


14.95 M 


68 


50V 


05 


01 


50V 


0/ 






82 

100 

220 


50V 
50V 
50V 


05 
05 
05 


02 
05 

1 


50 V 
50V 
12V 






07 


RFQKTHPC 




10 



WATT 5 : c CARBON FILM 

ALL STANDARD VALUES 

FROM 1 OHM TO 10 MEG OHM 

50 PIECES SAME VALUE 025 

100 PIECES SAME VALUE .02 

I 1000 PIECES SAME VALUE .015 



1N751 
1N759 

| 1N4148 
1N4001 
1N4004 
1N5402 

> KBP02 
KBP04 
MDA801 
MDA980-1 



DIODES 

5 1 VOLT ZENER 
12 VOLT ZENER 
( 1N914)SW1TCHING 25 
50PIV 1A 12 

400PIV RECTIFIER 10 
200PIV 3A 
200PIV 1 5A BRIDGE 
400PIV 1 5A BRIDGE 
50PIV 12A BRIDGE 
50PIV 12A BRIDGE 
100PIV 12A BRIDGE 
DIP BRIDGE 



HEAT SINKS 

I TO 220 SCREW ON 

TO 220 CLIP ON 

TO-3 SCREW ON 

TO-220 INSULATOR 

TO-3 INSULATOR 



.95 

10 1.00 
10 1.00 



SWITCHES 

SPOT MINI TOGGLE ON ON 
DPDT MINI TOGGLE ON ON 
DPDT MINI TOGGLE ON OFF ON 
SPST MINI PUSHBUTTON NO 
SPST MINI PUSHBUTTON N.C 
> BCD OUT 10 POSITION 6 PIN DIP 



MONOLITHIC 

Ol^t 50V 14 .1/jf 50V .18 

047pf 50V 15 .47//! 50V .25 

ELECTROLYTIC 

RADIAL AXIAL 

I 1/ii 25V .14 %fA 50V .14 



| 47 35V .18 

100 16V 18 

I 220 35V .20 

470 25V 30 

| 2200 16V .60 

COMPUTER 
GRADE 

L 44.000//I 30V 3 95 



27 

47 

100 

100 

220 

3J0 

500 

1000 

2200 

6000 



LED DISPLAYS 



43' 1 29 



HP5082 7760 CC 

MAN 72 CA .3" 

MAN 74 CC 3" 

FND 357(359i CC .375" 

FND-500I503) CC 5' 

FND 507(510) CA 5" 

L TIL-311 4x7 HEX W LOGIC 270 



DIFFUSED LEDS 



JUMBO RED T1 J < 

JUMBO GREEN T1 V 

JUMBO YELLOW T1 J 

MOUNTING HDW T1% 

MINI RED T1 

MINI GREEN T1 

MINI YELLOW T1 
RECT RED 
RECT GREEN 
L RECT YELLOW 26mm 



1 99 100 up I 



2x5mm 

2x5mm 



D-SUBMINIATURE 



DESCRIPTION 


ORDER BY 


CONTACTS 


9 


15 


25 


37 


50 


SOLDER CUP 


MALE 


DBxxP 


1.19 


1 59 


1 90 


2 85 


4 25 


FEMALE 


DBxxS 


1 50 


1.85 


2.25 


3 90 


525 


RIGHT ANGLE 
PC SOLDER 


MALE 


DBxxPR 


1 65 


2 20 


3.00 


4.83 




FEMALE 


DBxxSR 


2 18 


303 


3.00 


6.19 




WIRE WRAP 


MALE 


DBxxPWW 


1 69 


2.56 


389 


5 60 




FEMALE 


DBxxSWW 


2.76 


4.27 


6.84 


9.95 




IDC RIBBON CABLE 


MALE 


IDBxxP 


2 95 


3.90 


4.75 


6.95 




FEMALE 


IDBxxS 


325 


429 


5.25 


795 




HOODS 


BLACK 


HoodB 






99 






GREV 


HOOD 


.89 


99 


99 


1.09 


1 19 



MOUNTING HARDWARE-SI. 00 

FOR ORDERING INSTRUCTIONS SEE IDC CONNECTORS BELOW 




TEXTOOL ZERO INSERTION FORCE 
SOCKETS AND RECEPTACLES 



_-* g 




SCREWDRIVER CLAMP 
ECONOZIF 


LEVER CLAMP 
ZIF SOCKET 


WW RECEPTACLES 
ZIF RECEPTACLE 


TYPE 


CONTACTS 


14 


16 


24 


28 


40 


ECONOZIF 




495 


6.75 


775 


9.95 


Z|F SOCKET 


4.95 


4.95 


595 


695 


995 


ZIF RECEPTACLE 


8.25 


875 


9.75 


10.50 


12 75 



IDC CONNECTORS 



DESCRIPTION 


ORDER BY 


CONTACTS 


10 


20 


26 


34 


4G 


50 


SOLDER HEADER 


IDHxxS 


.82 


1 29 


1.68 


2.20 


2 58 


3 24 


HIGHT ANGLE SOLDER HEADER 


IDHxxSR 


.85 


1 35 


1 76 


2.31 


2.72 


339 


WW HEADER 


IDHmxW 


1 86 


298 


384 


450 


528 


663 


RIGHT ANGLE WW HEADER 


IDHxxWR 


2 05 


328 


422 


4.45 


480 


7.36 


RIBBON HEADER SOCKET 


IDSxx 


79 


.99 


1.39 


159 


199 


225 


RIBBON HEADER 


IDMxx 




550 


625 


766 


7.56 


856 


1 RIBBON EDGE CARD 


IDExx 


1.75 j 


2.25 


265, 


2.75 


3.80 


395 




ORDERING INSTUCTIONS: INSERT THE NUMBER OF CONTACTS IN THE POSITION MARKED "xx" OF THE 
'ORDER BY" PART NUMBER LISTED EXAMPLE A W PIN RIGHT ANGLE HOLDER STYLE WOULD BE IDH10SR 



RIBBON CABLE 




CONTACTS 


SINGLE COLOR 


COLOR CODED 


r 


10' 


1 


io- 


10 


18 


1.60 


.83 


7.30 


16 


.28 


2.50 


1 00 


8 80 


2P 


36 


3.20 


1 25 


11 00 


25 


.45 


4.00 


1 32 


11 60 


26 


46 


4 10 


1 32 


11 60 


34 


.61 


5.40 


1 65 


14.50 


40 


.72 


6.40 


1.92 


16.80 


50 


89 


7.50 


2.50 


22.00 



silsjDR Microdevices 

■ ■ 1224 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128 
800-538-5000 • 800-662-6279 (CA) • (408) 995-5430 
FAX (408) 275-8415 • Telex 171-110 



RETAIL STORE - 1256 S. BASCOM AVENUE 
HOURS: M-W-F, 9-5 TU-TH, 9-9 SAT, 10-3 



3MER NUMBER WHEN ORDERINC 



TERMS: Minim 
S2.50 lor UPS I 



are subject < 
typographica 

substitute ma 



i may require ad 
lies department I 
les tax. Bay Area 
> warranted for 90 
change without 



0. For shipping and handling include 
50 tor UPS Air. Orders over 1 lb. and 
dditional shipping charges • please 
tor the amount. CA. residents r 
a and LA residents include 6W 
days unless otherwise stated. Prices 
t notice. We are not responsible tor 



We 



ctu 



. All i 



erve the nght to limit quantities and to 
terchandise subject to prior sale. 



490 B YTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 214 



IBM PC PROTOTYPE CARD 



WITH DECODING CIRCUITRY 



$29.95 



WIRE WRAP 
PROTOTYPE CARDS 

FR-4 EPOXY GLASS LAMINATE 
WITH GOLD-PLATED EDGE-CARD FINGERS 



DISK DRIVES 

TAN DON 



$139.95 
$159.95 



IBM PR2 



IBM 



BOTH CARDS HA VE SILK SCREENED LEGENDS 

AND INCLUDES MOUNTING BRACKET 

IBM-PR1 WITH *5V AND GROUND PLANE .... $27.95 

IBM PR2 AS ABOVE WITH DECODING CIRCUITRY $29.95 



S-100 



TM 100-1 5V«" (FOR IBM) SS DO 
TM 100-2 5V," (FOR IBM) D6 DD 

V MPl 

MPI-B52 5%'|FORI$M*p#/Dl* $109.95 

TEAC 

FD-55BV5.HQ6HTDS DD *1*2& 

FD-55P MiElGHT DS QUAD $131.95 

SHUGART 

SA40«LS' J (40TRAdKJS8/DO $199.0* 

SA 460 *' V (8Q TRACK) OS, QUAO $19»»95 

8" DISK DRIVES 

FD1OO-S0V SIEMENS, SFtUOARtSOl EQLUV, 

B$/£>D ST 29.00 

FD200-8 B¥fl&M£NS, SHUGART 861 CQUIV. 

DS/Dt> «1 80.00 

j for mat- 2 ms.m 

SUPPORT FOR QUADOENSITY DRIVES 
FROM TALL TR EE SYSTEMS 



TEAC FD-55B 



TAN DON TM 100-2 



P100-1 
PI 00 2 


BARE - NO FOIL PADS 

HORIZONTAL BUS 


$15.15 
$21.80 


P100-3 


VERTICAL BUS 


$21 80 


PI 00-4 


SINGLE FOIL PADS PER HOLE 

APPLE 


S22.75 


P500-1 


BARE - NO FOIL PADS 


$15.15 


P500-3 


HORIZONTAL BUS 


$2*75 


P500-4 


SINGLE FOIL PADS PER HOLE 


$21 .80 


7060-45 


FOR APPLE lie AUX SLOT 


$30.00 




GENERAL PURPOSE 






22/44 PIN EDGE-CARD (. 156" SPACING) 




P441 1 


BARE - NO FOIL PAOS 4.5" x 6.0" . . . 


. $9.45 


P441-3 


VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 6.0" 


$13.95 


P441 -4 


SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 6.0" 


$14.20 


P442 1 


BARE - NO FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0" . . . 


$10.40 


P442-3 


VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 9.0" 


$14.20 


P442-4 


SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0" 

36/72 PIN EDGE-CARD (. 1 " SPACING J 


$13.50 


P721-1 


BARE - NO FOIL PADS 4.5" x 6.0" . . . 


. $9.45 


P721 3 


VERTICAL BUS 4.5" x 6.0" 


$13.25 


P721-4 


SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 6.0" 


$14.20 


P722-1 


BARE - NO FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0" . . . 


$10.40 


P722 3 


VERTICAL BUS 4.5* x 9.0" 


$14.20 


P722-4 


SINGLE FOIL PADS 4.5" x 9.0" ..... 


$15.15 


BARE GLASS BOARDS EXTENDER 


NO EDGE-CARD FINGERS OR FOIL CARDS 


P25x45 


2.5" x 4.5" $2.40 IBM 


$45.00 


P45x65 


4.5" x 6.5" $4.70 APPLE 


$45.00 


P45x85 


4.5" x 8.5" $6.20 MULTIBUS 


$86.00 


P45x170 


4.5" x17.0" $11.35 




P85x170 


8.5" x 17.0" $18.95 





PLEASE INCLUDE SUFFICENT AMOUNT FOR SHIPPING ON ABOVE ITEMS 



DISK DRIVE 
CABINETS 

CABINET #1 $29.95 I 

* Fits one full height 6' V disk drive 

* Color matches Apple 

CABINET #2 $79.00 

* Fits one full height 5'i"disk drive 

* Complete with power supply, switch, 
line cord, fuse and standard power 
connector 

* Please specify Grey or Tan ] 

CABINET #3 $89.95 

* Fits two half height 5V 4 "di$k drives 

i Complete with power supply, switch, 
line cord, fuse and standard power j 

connectors I 

8" DISK DRIVE CABINETS 

| ALSO AVAILABLE- PLEASE CALL 

PLEASE INCLUDE SUFFICIENT 
. AMOUNT FOR SHIPPING ON ABOVE ITEMS 



SWITCHING 
POWER SUPPLIES 

PS-IBM $175.00 

* FOR IBM PC-XT COMPATIBLE 

* 1 30 WATTS 

* +5V @> ISA, + 12V @ 4.2A 
-5V@ .5A,-12V@.5A 

* ONE YEAR WARRANTY 

PSA $49.95 

* USE TO POWER APPLE TYPE 
SYSTEMS 

► +5V @ 4 A, +12V @ 2. 5 A 
-5V@.5A, -12V@.5A 

* APPLE POWER CONNECTOR 



PS-3 



$39.95 



WIRE WRAP WIRE 

PRECUT AND STRIPPED 

Note: 1 inch of insulation is stripped on 
each end. A 3.5" wire has only 1 -5" of insu- 
lation. 

LENGTH QUANTITY 

(INCHES) 100 500 1000 



2 b 


1 60 


4.70 


820 


3 


1 60 


4.70 


8.20 


3 5 


165 


5 00 


8.90 


4 


1 75 


540 


9.60 


4 5 


1 80 


5 75 


10.30 


5 


1 86 


6 10 


11.00 


5 5 


1 90 


6.50 


11 75 


6 


2 00 


685 


12.50 


65 


2 30 


780 


14.30 


7 


240 


8.20 


15.05 


7.5 


250 


8 55 


15.85 


8 


.' (.0 


8 95 


16.60 


8 5 


265 


9.30 


17.40 


9 


2.70 


9.80 


18.15 


9.5 


2 80 


10.00 


18.95 


10 


2 90 


10.50 


19.70 


PRECUT ASSORTMENT 


IN ASSORTED COLORS 


$27.50 




lOOea: 5.5", 


6". 6.5", 1 






250ea: 2.5 


', 4.5". 5" 






500ea: 3' 


, 3.5", 4" 





TRANSFORMERS 
FRAME STYLE 

12.6V AC 2 AMP 

12.6V AC CT 2 AMP 

12.6V AC CT 4 AMP 7.95 

12.6V AC CT 8 AMP 10.95 

25.2V AC CT 2 AMP 7.95 

PLUG CASE STYLE 

12V AC 250ma 3.95 

12V AC 500m;. 4.95 

12V AC 1 AMP 5.95 

12V AC 2 AMP 6.95 

DC ADAPTER 

6, 9, 12V DC SELECTABLE WITH 
L UNIVERAL ADAPTER 8.95 



* AS USED IN APPLE III 

* +5V @ 4A, +12V @ 2.5A 
** -5V @ 25A, -12V @ .30A, 

i 15.5" x 4.5" x 2", .884 LBS. 

PS-ASTEC $19.95 

* CAN POWER TWO 5 1 /*" FDDS 

* -5V @ 2.5A, +12V @ 2A 
-12V @ .1A 

* +5V @ 5A IF +12V IS NOT USED 

* 6.3" x 4.0" x 1.9" 



MICROCOMPUTER 

HARDWARE 

HANDBOOK 

FROM ELCOMP $14.95 

Over 8 00 pages of manufacturer ' s 
data sheets on me most commonly 
used ICs 

* TTL - 74, 74LS & 74F 

* CMOS 

* Voltage regulators 

* Memory- RAM. ROM, E PROM 
- CPU'S 6800, 6500, Z80, 

8080, 8085 & 8086/8 

* MPU Support & Interface. 
6800, 6500. Z80, 8200, etc. 



OK INDUSTRIES 

EX 1 IC EXTRACTION TOOL 

* ONE PIECE METAL CONSTRUCTION 

* EASILY EXTRACTS 8 24 PIN DEVICES 

* LOW COST $2.19 

EX-2 IC EXTRACTION TOOL 

* EXTRACTS 24-40 PIN DEVICES 

* HEAVY DUTY METAL CONSTRUCTION 

* GROUND LUGS FOR MOS EXTRACTIONS 

* EASY ONE HAND OPERATION $12.74 

IC INSERTION TOOLS 

INS-1416 for 14-1 6 pin ICs $5.15 

MOS 141 6 for 14-16 pin ICs $10.92 
MOS 2428 for 24 28 pin ICs S10.92 
MOS -40 for 40 pin ICs $1 2.43 

MOS series insertion toots have metal constuction 
and include grounding lug for CMOS applications. 

BW-630 WIRE WRAP GUN 

* BATTERY POWERED USES 2 Nl CAD 
C CELLSfNOT INCLUDED} 

* POSITIVE INDEXING 

* ANTI-OVERWRAP DEVICE $41 .55 

WSU-30 WIRE WRAP TOOLS 

* WRAPS, STRIPS, AND UNWRAPS 

* WSU-30M WRAPS AN EXTRA TURN OF 
INSULATION 

WSU-30 $8.84/WSU-30M $10.14 
WIRE WRAP TERMINALS 



INS-1416 INS 2428 



WWT 1 
WWT-2 
WWT-3 
WWT-4 
INS-1 



SLOTTED 
SINGLE SIDED 
IC SOCKET 
DOUBLE SIDED 
INSERTION TOOL 



25 57.06 

25/84.25 

25 $7.06 

25/2.80 

$3.64 



ORDER TOLL FREE 



WIRE DISPENSER 

. WITH 50' ROLL OF WIRE 

* BUILT IN PLUNGER CUTS WIRE 
I BUILT IN STRIPPER STRIPES 1" 

* REFILLABLE 

WD-30 $6.50 WD-30TRI $9.50 

Specify Blue, white. With 50' of each: 
Yellow or Red Red, Blue and White 

SOCKET-WRAP I.D.™ 

* SUPS OVER WIRE WRAP PINS 

* IDENTIFIES PIN NUMBERS ON WRAP 
SIDE OF BOARD 

* CAN WRITE ON PLASTIC; SUCH AS IC # 



WSU 30 30M 



I l I 



(CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS) 



>INS 


PART# 


PCK. OF 


PRICE 


8 


IDWRAP 08 


10 


1.95 


14 


IDWRAP 14 


10 


1 95 


16 


IDWRAP 16 


10 


1 95 


18 


IDWRAP 18 


5 


1.95 


20 


IDWRAP 20 


5 


1.95 


22 


IDWRAP 22 


5 


1.95 


24 


IDWRAP 24 


5 


1.95 


28 


IDWRAP 28 


5 


1 95 


40 


IDWRAP 40 


5 


1.95 



SPOOLS 

100 feet $4.30 250 feet S7 25 

| 500 feet S13.25 1000 feet $21.95 

Please specify color: 

Blue, Black, Yellow or Red 



GE NICKEL-CADMIUM 
RECHARGABLE BATTERIES 

NI-CAD CHARGER PACKAGE 

| PRICE INCLUDES CHARGER (WALL PLUG), 
BATTERIES. & MODULAR BATTERY HOLDER 
AAA CELLS QTY.2 $11.71 

AA CELLS QTY.2 $11.71 

C CELLS QTY. 2 $13.21 

D CELLS QTY.2 $13.21 

| 9 VOLT QTY. 1 $13.21 

BATTERIES ONLY 



PLEASE ORDER BY NUMBER OF 
PACKAGES (PCK. OF» 



20 MHz DUAL TRACE 
OSCILLOSCOPE 

FROM 
RAMSEY ELECTRONICS 



AAA CELLS 


PKG. 2 


S6.07 pr. 


AA CELLS 


PKG 1 


$3.03 ea. 


C CELLS 


PKG 1 


$3.78 ea. 


D CELLS 


PKG. 1 


S3. 78 ea. 


9 VOLT 


PKG. 1 


$7.57 ea. 



UNSURPASSED QUALITY AT AN UNBEATABLE PRICE 

* BAND WIDTH DC: DC TO 20MHz |-3db) 

AC: 1 0Hz TO 20MHz (-3db> 

* SWEEP TIME .2 /jSEC TO .5 SEC DIV ON 20 RANGES 

* VERT./HORZ. DEFLECTION: 5mV TO 20V/DIV ON 20 RANGES 

* COMPLETE MANUAL AND HIGH QUALITY 
HOOK ON PROBES INCLUDED 

* INPUT IMPEDANCE: 1 MEG OHM 
■ TV VIDEO SYNC FILTER 
t X, Y AND Z AXIS OPERATION 

* 1 10/220 VOLT 50 60Hz OPERATION 

* COMPONENT TESTER 

* LP CONSUMPTION 19WATTS 
I BUILT IN CALIBRATOR 

* AUTOMATIC OR TRIGGERED TIMEBASE 



$399.95 

WITH PROBES 

FULL ONE YEAR 
WARRANTY 



MULTIMETER PEN 



EEn^S 



AUTO RANGING, POLARITY & DECIMAL! 



• LARGE 3' 2 DIGIT DISPLAY 

• DATA HOLD SWITCH FREEZES READING 

• FAST, AUDIBLE CONTINUITY TEST 

• LOW BATTERY INDICATOR 

• OVERLOAD PROTECTION 

• ONLY iW *9W XW 
> DC VOLTS 1mV-500V 

• AC VOLTS 1mV-500V 

• .1 OHM 20 MEG OHMS 

• WEIGHS ONLY 2.3 OUNCES 

• LOW PARTS COUNT CUSTOM 80 PIN LSI INSURES RELIABILITY 

• INCLUDES MANUAL BATTERIES, SOFT CASE, 2 PROBE TIPS, 
AND ALU GATOR CLIP 



ONLY 
$49.95 



right 1985 JDR Mlcrodi 



Inquiry 2 1 4 



APRIL 1985 • BYTE 491 



TEAC-FD55B BRU iffi 129.95 



MPI-B52 D »ec HI 109.95 



fcPROM PROGRAMMER 

FOR APPLE COMPUTERS 

RP525 
$79.95 




* LOW COST! 

* DUPLICATE OR BURN ANY 
STANDARD 27xx SERIES EPROM 

* EASY TO USE MENU-DRIVEN 
SOFTWARE INCLUDED 

* MENU SELECTION FOR 

2716, 2732, 2732A, 2764 & 27128 

* HIGH SPEED WRITE ALGORITHM 
LED INDICATORS FOR ACTIVITY 

* NO EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLY 
REQUIRED 



16K RAM CARD $39.95 

BARE PC CARD AND INSTRUCTIONS $9.95 

* 2 YEAR WARRANTY 

* EXPAND YOUR 48K APPLE TO 64K 

* USE IN PLACE OF APPLE LANGUAGE 
CARD 



DISK DRIVES 

FOR APPLE COMPUTERS 




BAL-525 
$139.95 



* V 2 HEIGHT-ALPS MECHANISM 

* 100% APPLE COMPATIBLE 

* FULL 1 YEAR WARRANTY 




BAL-500 
$169.95 



t TEAC MECHANISM- DIRECT DRIVE 
r 100% APPLE COMPATIBLE- 35TRACK 
i 40 TRACK WHEN USED WITH 
OPTIONAL CONTROLLER 




MITAC 

AD-1 

$179.95 



* FULL HEIGHT SHUGART 
MECHANISM 

* DIRECT REPLACEMENT FOR APPLE 
DISK II 

DISK DRIVE ACCESSORIES 

DISK CONTROLLER CARD $49 95 
APPLE lie ADAPTOR CABLE $19.95 

NOW FOR APPLE lie 



DISK DRIVES FOR IBM 



Tl 

FD55B 

51 29.95 



TANDOI 

TM100-2 

$159.95 
MPI 

MODEL B52 

$109.95 

IDM ACCESSORIES 

MAXIM1ZER $259.95 

SIGMA MULTIFUNCTION CARD 

HAYES SMARTMODEM $419.95 

1200B FOR IBM 

PRINTER CABLE $19.95 

PARALLEL 6' SHIELDED CABLE 

KRAFT JOYSTICK $399 

H DMC MONITOR STAND 

MODEL PA-900 

TILTS AND SWIVELS 
TO PROVIDE 
OPTIMUM VIEWING 
ANGLE, REDUCES 
OPERATOR FATIGUE 




$8.95 



DISKETTE FILE 



IF PURCHASED 

WITH 50 DISKETTES 

OR MORE 



$9.95 IF PURCHASED ALONE 

HOLDS 70 SV« 

DISKETTES, 
WITH ROOM 
TO SPARE 




NASHUA DISKETTES 

5 1 /a" SOFT SECTOR 
DS/DD WITH HUB RINGS 

BULK PACKAGED IN FACTORY SEALED BAGS 
OF 50. INCLUDES DISKETTE SLEEVES AND 
WRITE PROTECTTABS. IDEAL FOR SCHOOLS, 
CLUBS, AND USERS GROUPS. THIS IS A 
SPECIAL PURCHASE, SO QUANTITIES ARE 
LIMITED. THERE IS A 5 YEAR WARRANTY. 

$1.39ea. $1.49ea. $1.59ea. 



QH 250 



on 100 



QTY50 




NASHUA DISKETTES WERE JUDGED TO HAVE 

THE HIGHEST POLISH AND RECORDED 

AMPLITUDE OF ANY DISKETTES TESTED 

(SEE "COMPARING FLOPPY DISKS", BYTE 9/84) 



FACTORY SPECIAL $14.95 M VERBATIM DATALIFE DISKETTES 



ORDER TOLL FREE 



SS/DD 

SS/DD 

. DS/DD 



SOFT SECTOR $29.95 

10 SECTOR HARD $29.95 
SOFT SECTOR $34.95, 



;Ii HBrt nflili 1 1 



800-662-6279, 



i ♦ BMC BK 80 PRINTER 

PRINTER. 

$199.95 



80 CPS DOT MATRIX PRINTER 

BI-DIRECTIONAL 
. SUPERB GRAPHICS 
i CENTRONICS INTERFACE 

CLOSE-OUT SPECIAL. QUANTITIES LIMITED 




APPLE ACCESSORIES 



VIEWMAX-80 
VIEWMAX-80e 
GRAPHMAX 
THUIMDERCLOCK 
KRAFT JOYSTICK 
POWER SUPPLY 



$159.95 
$129.95 
$129.95 
$129.95 
$39.95 
$49.95 



IBM COMPATIBLE 
POWER SUPPLIES 

130 WATT 
$159.95 

XT COMPATIBLE 

* +5V@ ISA, +12 @4.2A 
-5 @ 5A, -12 @ ,5A 

* UPGRADE YOUR PC, POWERS HARD DISK 

* POWER CABLES FOR 4 FDDs 

* ONE YEAR WARRANTY 

* SWITCH ON SIDE (FITS IBM CASE) 

100 WATT 
$99.95 

* SWITCH ON REAR 

* FOR USE IN OTHER 
IBM TYPE MACHINES 

* AVAILABLE IN 100W 
OR 130W VERSIONS 

* 90 DAY WARRANTY 

130 WATT MODEL 




$129.95. 



IB 1224 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128 
800-538-5000 • 800-662-6279 (CA) • (408) 995-5430 
FAX (408) 275-8415 • Telex 171-110 



Copyright 1985 JDR Mlcrode 



RETAIL STORE - 1256 S. BASCOM AVENUE 
HOURS: M-W-F, 9-5 TU-TH, 9-9 SAT, 10-3 

PLEASE USE YOUR CUSTOMER NUMBER WHEN ORDERING 

TERMS: Minimum order $10.00. For shipping and handling include 
S2.50 lor UPS Ground and S3. 50 for UPS Air. Orders over 1 lb. and 
foreign orders may require additional shipping charges - please 
contact our sales department for the amount. CA. residents must 
include 6% sales tax. Bay Area and LA residents include 6Vi%. All 
erchandise is warranted for 90 days unless otherwise stated. Prices 
are subject to change without notice. We are not responsible for 
typographical errors. We reserve the right to limit quantities and to 
substitute manufacturer. All merchandise subject to prior sale. 

APPLE IS A TRADEMARK OF APPLE COMPUTER CO. 



492 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



Inquiry 2 I 5 



UNCLASSIFIED ADS 



WANTED: Children's Service Society of Wisconsin 
seeks tax-deductible donation of Apple lie or 11 + 
for information management. Carole Montemayor. 
Children's Service Society, 2059 Atwood Ave.. 
Madison. Wl 53704. (608) 249-8506. 

WANTED: Charitable nonprofit organization seeks 
donation of computers, peripherals, printers, mon- 
itors, terminals, disk drives, memory expansion, etc. 
Certified receipts furnished; will pay reasonable 
shipping, Holdeman International. POB 329, West 
Point, MS 39773, 

WANTED: Donations of any personal computer. 
peripherals, and supplies to advance work of stut- 
tering self-help organization, Tax-deductible; will pay 
shipping. Speak Easy Intl. Foundation. 233 Concord 
Dr.. Paramus, N] 07652, (201) 262-0895. 

WANTED: A group of Malaysian students in Fresno 
would like advice and support from experienced 
IBM PC users, Hasnul Hashim, Apt. D. 2127 East 
Shaw Ave.. Fresno CA 93710. (209) 229-1214. 

AVAILABLE: Free to all MS-DOS. PC-DOS. and Z-DOS 
users; disk containing 55-page book about tech- 
niques for structured programming, plus demo pro- 
grams. Send disk, mailer, and stamps to Dennis 
Baer. 2 5 Miller Rd . Farmingdale, NY 11735. (516) 
694-5872. 

WANTED: Nonprofit antiabortion group needs com- 
puter equipment and peripherals for national office 
The Pro-Life Brotherhood, 3 50 South Orchard Dr.. 
Park Forest. IL 60466. (312) 747-0348. 

NEEDED: Information about Systems Engineering 
Enterprise (SEE) Corp., their users, technicians, or 
employees. My SEE 6684 System lost I PL PROM in- 
formation. Last address was in Rockville. MD; 
telephone disconnected. Miguel Martinez, Puerto 
Rico 4I9B, Leon, Guanajuato. Mexico 37360. 

WANTED: Implementation of Kevin Weiier's Hidden 
Surface algorithm ("Hidden Surface Removal Using 
Polygon Area Sorting." SIGGRAPH. August 1977). 
Ernie Pyle. Apt. 1. Building 38, 2147 Linton Blvd., 
Delray Beach, FL 33445, (305) 272-1744 or 
998-1259. 

WANTED: College student requests any information 
on catastrophe theory and/or fractals and their im- 
plementation on a computer. Chris Mathews, 416 
Redondo N. Litchfield Park, AZ 85340. 

NEEDED: Information on programs involving concept 
of "Music of the Spheres." Has anyone composed 
music using sound analogs of planetary orbits, etc., 
as themes? Musicological research paper in prog- 
ress needs references. Tom Shinnick, Apt. 3, 1905 
Brunson. Houston. TX 77030. 

FOR SALE: IMSAI-original, unassembled, mint con- 
dition. J. j. Haugh. 3970 North Oakland Ave.. Mil- 
waukee, Wl 53211, (414) 962-5022. 9 am -5 p.m. 

FOR SALE: C Itoh F10-40 printer: $899: Qume 
QVT102: $438; Morrow MP 1 00 printer: $308; Tl 855 
with tractor: $698: Morrow MDT60 video terminal: 
$278; Morrow MD2 (new): $798. Liberty 100: $318. 
All near new. original packing. G S, Schacter, POB 
1002. South Gate. CA 90280, (213) 567-8758. 

FOR SALE: Intel 8087 for IBM ceramic chips: $17 5. 
Steve Rank. 1260 Monument Blvd., Concord, CA 
94518. 

FOR SALE: SD Systems S-100 board set, including 
SBC 200 Z80 CPU/IO. Versafloppy II 5- and 8-inch 
controller. ExpandoRAM II 64 K memory fully 
populated, all manuals: $500 or best offer. Isaac 
Davidian, 2 329 East Ashlan. Fresno. CA 93726. (209) 
227-2005 or 224-9212 

FOR SALE: S-100 boards. Com pu Pro CPU 8085/8088: 
$200; CompuPro CPU Z80: $1 50. Vector Bitstreamer 
3 serial 2 parallel I/O: $75; two 32 K dual-memory 
boards: $75. Bob Lankford, 4117 Spruce Hills Dr.. 
Cedar Falls, IA 50613. (319) 277-2424. 

WANTED: Information or instructions on building a 
heat laser. I pay all postage and handling. Tom 
Chrisman, Rt 3, Box 194, Hamburg, AR 71646. 

NEEDED: Correspondence with Victor 9000 users, 
groups, clubs, or newsletters. John Howard, POB 
712. North Haven. CT 06473. 

WANTED: Other HX-20 owners to form a U.S.-based 
club, lames Stensrud, 26 East Superior St.. Duluth. 
MN 55802. 

FOR SALE: Two 8-inch Qume disk drives in Vista 
cabinet. DS/DD. hardly used. Includes manual. 
Scotch disks, head-cleaning kit. two cables: $700. 



Ellis King, 6520 Selma #209. Los Angeles. CA 
90028. (213) 467-3000. or Dick Myers. (213) 
652-4071, 8-9 a.m. 
NEEDED: Epson QX-10 people interested in sharing 
information and resolving application problems. 
Patric Lee Howley, 4 54 Barcelona Dr., Satsuma, AL 
36572. 
FOR SALE: Z-100 computer, two drives, 192K plus col- 
or video RAM, 8-MHz, etc: $2195. Also twin 
Siemens 8-inch drives with power and enclosure: 
S200 (need adjustment). George Tucker, 11615 
Mississippi, Los Angeles. CA 90025.(213)473-7691 
FOR SALE: Hewlett-Packard equipment: IDS 560G 
200-cps, wide-forms printer: $750: 9130A disk drive 
(for 86A): $4 50. HP41C calculator with statistics, 
time, HPIL interface, and quad memory modules: 
$285:82161 HPIL tape drive: $285; both for $580. 
Randy Webb. 622 East 11th St.. Bloomington. IN 
47401. (812) 335-1858 or 339-7661. 
NEEDED: Dr. Dobbs lournal issues 57. 58. 59, 62, 63. 
and 64; any reasonable price paid. Also I have spare 
copies of issues 48, 49, 51, 53, and 55. David Millne. 
c/o NVR, Front St. W. Bedlington. Northumberland, 
NE22 5UB. England. 
FOR TRADE: Our small public-domain users group 
for Apple II and TRS-80 Model III disk systems is 
expanding its software database. Send your public- 
domain software list or disk(s) and we'll return them. 
Arthur Hamlyn. Twillingate, Newfoundland A0G 
4M0. Canada, 
FOR SALE: Sabtronics LCD digital multimeter (bench 
type): $85. Sabtronics functional generator (bench 
type): $85. Heathkit 10-4235 3 5-MHz. dual-trace, 
delayed-sweep oscilloscope: $685. All like new. Tom 
Lee, Apt. 240, 100 North Whisman St.. Mountain 
View, CA 94043, (408) 946-3000 or (41 5) 969-5734. 
FOR SALE: BYTE volume 2, numbers 5. 11, 12. 
volume 3. numbers 1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Like-new condi- 
tion: $5 each or $3 7. 50 for all. Kilobaud numbers 1-22, 
like-new condition: $90. Numbers 14. 15, 16. 17. like- 
new condition: $5 each or $17.50 for set. J. C. Ar- 
quette, 218-B Marshall St., Princeton. NI 08540. (609) 
924-8919. 

FOR SALE: Radio Shack Model 100. 32 K (factory in- 
stalled), case, AC adapter, GE Computer Data Re- 
corder, modem-phone and parallel-printer (Cen- 
tronics-type) cables: $1395 value for $899. First cer- 
tified check takes it. M. Neidich. 18 Hillside Lane, 
Syosset, NY 11791, (516) 921-3603 for UPS collect 
shipment. 
FOR SALE: Quay 520 desktop computer. Includes 64 K 
RAM. parallel-printer port. RS232C serial port; asyn- 
chronous communications software, owner-written: 
$900 plus shipping. Bill Connor. 6 Schooner's Cove, 
East Setauket, NY 11733. (516) 231-0333. 
WANTED: Tomy Tutor-compatible cassette recorder; 
will pay up to $1 50 for new, or patch cord for regular 
recorder and information on start-up. Bruce Turner, 
353 Wisteria. Las Vegas. NV 89107. 
WANTED: Contact with HP 85/86/87 users for club. 
Andre Lechat. case postale 3, CH-1510 Moudon. 
Switzerland. 
NEEDED: Any information on a Measurement 
Systems and Controls Inc. 64K dynamic RAM board. 
Model DMB-6400. Rev. B. Hal Arthurs. Bloomfield 
Station, Prince Edward Island COB 1E0. Canada, 
(902) 882-2746. 
WANTED: BYTE August 1980 for articles on FORTH, 
Charlie Hottel. 5900 Kentucky Ave.. Forestville, MD 
20747, (301) 735-7495. 



UNCLASSIFIED ADS MUST be noncommercial, from 
readers who have computer equipment to buy, sell or trade 
on a one-time basis. Alt requests for donated computer 
equipment must be from nonprofit organizations. Programs 
to be exchanged must be written by the individual or be 
in the public domain. Ads must be typed double-spaced, 
contain 50 words or less, and include full name and ad- 
dress. This is a free service: ads are printed as space per- 
mits. BYTE reserves the right to reject any unclassified 
ad that does not meet these criteria. When you submit 
your ad (BYTE. Unclassified Ads. POB 372. Hancock. 
NH 03449), allow at least four months for it to appear 



WANTED: SYM-1. KIM-1. and accessories. Send 
specifics. SASE. and price. Brian lacoby. RR 1 , Box 
157, Vesta, MN 56292. 

FOR SALE: Two IBM SS/DD 514-inch disk drives, 
perfect condiditon: $100 each, both for $150. or 
best offer. A. Neil Hermanson, 2039 Parkdale, 
Kingwood, TX 77339, (713) 3 58-9153 after 6 p.m. 

FOR SALE: Sony Typecorder with serial communica- 
tions module and microcassette storage unit: $500. 
Also, Olivetti model 231 word processor with wafer- 
tape storage unit and many spin-wheel type 
elements: $1500. Lee D Miller. 932 North Lakeshore 
Dr.. Lincoln. NE 68528 (402) 435-3864. 

FOR SALE: 8-s!ot SI 00 bus system, includes Z80 B, 
serial and parallel, 64 K; Qume DS/DD 8-inch floppy, 
Ampex 20-megabyte hard disk with Monitor 
Dynamics controller card. TeleVideo 92 5 terminal, 
Daisywriter printer, and more: $4 500 for all, 
negotiable. Kirk Turner. 22054 DeBerry Grand Ter- 
race. CA 92324. (714) 783-0636. 

WANTED: Omron 12SR. Pickett N4ES. Corvus 500. 
State condition and price in letter. William B. Adams, 
POB 1467, Springfield, VA 22151. 

FOR SALE: IBM-compatible with 8088 and Z80 pro- 
cessors: runs PC-DOS, MS-DOS. CP/M-86. CP/M-80; 
two disk drives; I28K memory; serial port: parallel 
port, portable with 9-inch green monitor; RGB and 
composite color outputs: $1 500. Cory Barker, 1715 
East 1750 N, Layton, UT 84041, (801) 546-2084. 

FOR SALE: Onyx C8002 computer with 40-megabyte 
hard disk. 512K main memory, and peripherals. 
Wallace Landholm. 320 Superior Ave. #3 50, 
Newport Beach. CA 92663, (714) 631-4780. 

NEEDED: Computer-controlled auto-dial unit that 
uses a serial RS-232C port. Have Bell 212AR 300/ 
1200-bps modem. Would like circuit diagram and 
parts list for building, or company address, $50 or 
less. Tom Brown, 65 Hillside Ave,, Berkeley Heights, 
NJ 07922. 

NEEDED: Correspondence with other HP 75 users 
who want to exchange ideas. Letters received will 
be copied or digested and sent to others who write, 
but this is not a newsletter per se. Particularly in- 
terested in business and financial applications. 
Patrick Cully, 77 Labau Ave,. Staten Island. NY 
10301. 

WANTED: I need information on starting a BBS. Any 
help appreciated: tips, public-domain or user-written 
software for the Apple II. articles, etc. Will pay 
postage and expenses. Paul Allen, POB 29874, 65th 
Infantry Station. San luan. Puerto Rico 00929. 

WANTED: Will buy used Digicom p DR70, Astrion Sys- 
tem 30. and/or Epson QX-10. Kaypro 4. or Apple 
He. Also system with dot-matrix and letter-quality 
printer. Need a user group on the central Oregon 
coast and astrological software sources. J. Robin- 
dottir, Venus, POB 2435, Lincoln City, OR 97367, 
(5031 996-3665. 

FOR SALE: Quantel Color Frame Grabber: system in- 
cludes NTSC decoder and encoder, 16-bit CPU. two 
8-inch floppy-disk drives, documentation, source 
code, bit pad, terminal, and 19-inch Tektronix 670 
color monitor. Dave Sieg. 7232 Leota Lane. Canoga 
Park, CA 91304, (818) 883-4853. 

FOR SALE: Two S-100 boards. 16K dynamic RAM. 
32 K static RAM. video interface, three parallel and 
serial ports. 2K PROM, and music boards. lim 
Heires, 5104 South 79th Ave., Ralston. NE 68127, 
(402) 331-6749 or 345-8400. 

FOR SALE: Texas Instruments Professional computer, 
desktop model. Almost new. 13-inch hi-res color 
monitor; 3-plane(8-color) graphics card; 2 56K; two 
disk drives; documentation and instructions. $2900 
or best offer. Elizabeth Peterson. 240 North Oak St., 
lanesville. IA 50647. (319) 987-2286. 

FOR SALE: Two IBM 514-inch I60K disk drives in 
original cartons. Excellent condition, practically new. 
Were $578. asking $260 or $140 each. With docu- 
mentation. E. V. Allegretti, RD 3. Lois Lane. Katonah. 
NY 10536, (914) 232-4470. 

FOR SALE: Assorted S-100 boards: SD Systems Ex- 
pandoRAM II 64K: $175, lade Big Z Z80 CPU: $50. 
Z80B CPU: $175; SSM VB3A 80-character by 50-line 
video board and 160 by 200 matrix graphics: $3 50; 
CCS 2422 floppy-disk controller: $2 50. Dale Barrett, 
16544 San Jacinto Ave.. Fontana, CA 9233 5. (714) 
822-2511. 



APRIL 1985 -BYTE 493 



BOMB 



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BYTE's Ongoing Monitor Box 

ARTICLE AUTHOR'S. 

What's Not BYTE staff 

Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar: 

Build the Home Run Control System, 

Part I: Introduction Ciarcia 

Coprocessing in Modula-2 Wilson 

A Million-Point Graphics Tablet Hawley 

Communication with Alien Intelligence . . Minsky 
The Quest to Understand Thinking . . . Schank. 

Hunter 
The LISP Tutor Anderson. 

Reiser 
PROUST Johnson. 

Soloway 

Architectures for A I Deering 

The LISP Revolution Winston 

The Challenge of Open Systems Hewitt 

Vision Ballard, 

Brown 

Learning in Parallel Networks Hinton 

Connections . . Feldman 

Reverse Engineering the Brain Stevens 

The Technology of Expert Systems Michaelsen. 

Michie, 

Boulanger 
Inside an Expert System Thompson, 

Thompson 

The ITT XTRA Unger 

Insight— A Knowledge System DAmbrosio 

Computing at Chaos Manor: 

Over the Moat Pournelle 

BYTE West Coast: Lasers, 

Office Publishing, and More Markoff, 

Robinson 

BYTE U.K.: New Database Ideas Pountain 

BYTE Japan: 

The Fifth Generation in Japan Raike 



LINEAR RELIABILITY 

Readers voted most favorably for 
"Understanding Linear Power Supplies," 
Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar project 
appearing in January. In second place is the 
second part of the interview with Steve 
Wozniak: "The Apple Story: More History 
and the Apple III." conducted by BYTE 
senior technical editor Gregg Williams and 
Rob Moore. Rob wins $100. jerry Pournelle's 
whirlwind tour in The Fast Lane" of 
Computing at Chaos Manor wound up 
winning third place. "A Glimpse into Future 
Television" placed fourth in the survey; 
Joseph Nadan earns $50. And fifth mention 
goes to an article written about a tool for 
thinking: "The Visual Mind and the 
Macintosh" by Bill Benzon. 



BYTE ADVERTISING SALES STAFF: 






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Telex. RS35539 SEAVEX 





494 BYTE • APRIL 1985 



READER SERVICE 



Inquiry No. 



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!ST PLACE SYSTEMS. 148 

2500 AD SOFTWARE 220 221 

4-5-6 WORLD 466 

5K COMPUTERS 462 

800 SOFTWARE 222 

AST RESEARCH 19 

AST RESEARCH 19 

AB COMPUTERS 314 

ABC DATA PRODUCTS 464 

ADPS 86 

ADDMASTER CORP 472 

ADV BUSINESS COMP SYS 403 
ADV COMP PROD 469 

ADV COMPUTER SYSTEMS 376 

ADV DIGITAL CORP 247 

ADV DIGITAL CORP . 247 

ADVANCED LOGIC SYSTEMS . 234 
AF'TEK BUSN MACHINES . . 35 

ALF PRODUCTS INC 320 

ALLIED MICRO DEVICES 460 

ALLOY COMPUTER PRODUCTS 344 
AMARAY CORP . 405 

AMBER SYSTEMS 122 123 

AMBER SYSTEMS 329 

AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS 466 
AMERICAN RESEARCH CORP . 313 
AMPRO COMPUTERS INC 205 

ANCHOR AUTOMATION 397 

ANTHRO CORP 369 

APOLLO MARK: 452 

APPLE COMPUTER INC Cll. I 

APPLIED SOFTWARE TECH 242 

APROPOS TECHNOLOGY 472 

ARTIFICIAL INT L RESRCHGRP 474 
ARTISOFT 380 

ARTISOFT 380 

ARTISOFT 84 

ARTISOFT 84 

ASHTONTATE 139 

AT&T GENERAL BUSN SYS 257 

AUSTIN SCIENTIFIC 392 

AVATEX MODEM It 8. 119 

AVOCET 173 

B&B ELECTRONICS . . 466 

B&C MICROSYSTEMS 472 

BARR SYSTEMS INC. . . 64 

BASF SYSTEMS 135 

BAY n I HNICAL ASSOC . . 23 

BEST POWER TECHNOLOGY 361 
BEST WESTERN INTL . 30 

BLACKSHIP COMP SUPPLIES 462 
BLAISE COMPUTING INC 394 

BORLAND INT L 28. 29 

BORLAND INTL . . 41 

BORLAND INT I. 43 

BORLAND INTL . 45 

BUEHLER SERVICES INC . 470 

BUSINESS TOOLS INC 308 

BYTE BACK ISSUES . . 4 39 

BYTE PUBLINC 415 

BYTE SUBSCRIBER SERVICE 172 
BYTE TIPS 411 

BYTE TIPS ID CARD 496 

BYTEK COMP SYS CORP 424 

CWAREDESNUlC 256 

C-SYSTEMS . . 468 

C iTOH DIGITAL PRODUCTS 38 

C ITOH DIGITAL PRODUCTS 38 

CALIF DIGITAL 484. 485 

CALIF MICRO COMPUTER 474 

CALIF MICRO HOUSE 280 

CANON USA 283 

CANON USA 285 

CAPITAL EQUIPMENT CORP 359 
CDR SYSTEMS . 460 

CENTROID CORP 464 

CERMETEK MICRO ELECTRONICS 425 
CHIPS N DIPS 472 

CHORUS DATA SYSTEMS 115 

CLINICAL MICROSYSTEMS INC 68 
CLOCK COMPUTER CO LTD .472 

COASTLINE COMPUTER 454 

COMP COMPNTS. UNLTD 385 



lnquir\ No 



Page No. 



72 COMP COMPNTS UNLTD 386 387 

73 COMPETITIVE EDGE 360 
437 , OMPOWER 481 

• COM PUMA!. 458 

77 COMPUSERVE 215 

78 COMPUTER AFFAIRS INC . . 117 

79 COMPUTER AFFAIRS INC 470 

80 COMPUTER CHANNEL 363 

• COMPUTER CHRONICLES 302 

81 COMPUTER CONNECTION INC 453 

82 COMPUTER DISCOUNT PROD 455 

• COMPUTER FRIENDS . . 190 

83 IMPUTER HUT OF N E 130 

84 COMPUTER INNOVATIONS 343 

85 COMPUTER INNOVATIONS 365 

86 COMPUTER MAIL ORDER 300, 301 

87 COMPUTER PARTS MART 470 

• COMPUTER WAREHOUSE 154 

89 COMPUTER BANC 60 

90 COMPUTERLANE UNLTD INC .474 

91 COMPUTERS AND MORE 356 

92 COMPUTERS WHOLESALE 465 

93 COMPUTRADE. 422 

94 CONROY-LAPOINTE 156. 157 

95 CONROY-LAPOINTE 156. 157 

96 CONROY-LAPOINTE 156 157 

97 lROMEMCO 5 

98 CUESTA SYSTEMS 358 

408 CUSTOM COMP TECH 153 

409 CUSTOM COMP TECH 449 

410 CUSTOM COMP TECH 448 

102 CYMA CORPORATION 331 

103 CYMA CORPORATION 331 

104 DATA BANK 422 

105 DATA EXCHANGE 474 

107 DATA SPEC 66 

108 DATA SPEC 66 

109 DATA TRANSLATION INC . 85 

110 DATACOPY CORP 382 
lit DAYNA COMM 71.72.73 

112 DECISION RESOURCES . 375 

113 DECMATION 470 

114 DIGITAL ELECT SYS 450 

117 DIGITAL PRODUCTS INC . 152 

• DIGITAL RESEARCH COMP 70 

118 DIRECT-CONNECT DEVICES 462 
■ DISCOUNT COMPUTER CENTERS 291 

119 DISKETTE CONNECTION . 424 

120 DISKS N THINGS 462 

121 DiSKS PLUS 468 

122 DISKWORLD 1 INC. . 475 

123 DISKWORLD!. INC . 451 

124 DISPLAY TELECOMMNTNS 486 487 

125 DIVERSIFIED COMPUTER SYS 460 

126 DOKAY COMP PROD INC 482. 483 

127 DOW IONES SOFTWARE 420.421 

128 DWICHTG 468 

129 DYN A SYSTEMS 460 

130 DYNACOMP COMPUTER SYS 201 

131 DYSAN CORP 79 

133 EARTH COMPUTERS 474 

134 EASTMAN KODAK CO 207 
436 ECI 481 

135 ECOSOFT 18 

136 EDUCATIONAL MICROCOMP 470 

137 h COMP 481 

138 ELECTRONIC DATA SYS 219 

139 ELEK-TEK 364 

140 I LEXOR INC 468 

• ELLIS COMPUTING INC . 171 

141 ENCHANTED FOREST 468 



Inquiry No. 



Page No. 



143 ENTER COMPUTER . . 232 

144 INTERCOMPUTER . . 232 
' EPSON AMERICA 281 

146 f VEREX SYSTEMS 56. 57 

147 EXSEL SYS CORP 462 

148 EXIM INTERNATIONAL 481 

149 EXPOTEK 166 

150 EXPRESS BUSINESS SOFTWARE 16 
51 FACIT A3 367 

151 FALCON SAFETY PROD . 54 

152 FLAGSTAFF ENGINEERING 381 

153 FLAGSTAFF ENGINEERING 381 

154 FORTRON INC 471 

155 FORTRON INC 471 

157 FOX SOFTWARE INC 464 

158 FRIENDLY COMPUTER. . 78 

159 FUJITSU AMERIl A 272.273 
430 GENERAL DATA COMM. . 481 

163 GENERAL MICRO SYSTEMS 474 

164 GENERAL TECHNOLOGY 187 

165 GENESIS MICROSYSTEMS 161 

166 GIFFORD COMP SYS 321 

167 GOLD HILL COMPUTERS 129 

168 GOLD HILL COMPUTERS 307 

169 GOLD HILL COMPUTERS 309 

170 GOLD HILL COMPUTERS 311 

171 DEN BOW SYSTEMS 460 

172 GOULD INC 351 

174 GREYWOLF MARKETING 390 

175 GTCO CORP 437 

176 GTEK INC 69 

177 H&E COMPU1 RON1CS 383 

178 HARMONY VIDEO & COMP 84 

179 HARMONY VIDEO & COMP 360 

181 HAYES MICROCOMP PROD 407 

182 •••H COMPANY 357 

183 HERCULES COMPUTER TECH 25 

184 HERCULES COMPUTER TECH 111 

185 HERMES PRECISA INTL. . . 93 

186 HITECH EQUIP CORP 464 

187 HOFFMAN INTL 472 
' HOLIDAY INNS INC 176. 177 

190 HUMAN EDGE SOFTWARE 142 

191 HYPERON SOFTWARE 476 

192 I >.SYSTI 366 

193 IBM - USGl SERVICES . 400 

194 IBM CORP . 46, 47 

195 ILAR SYSTEMS INC . . 284 

196 ILAR SYSTEMS. INC . 284 

197 INDUS-TOOL 460 

198 INOVION CORP 32 

199 INTEGRAND.. 402 

200 INTELLIGENT COMPDESIGNS 230 

201 INTEU IGENT DATA SYS INC 228 
438 INTERNATIONAL UNION OF 

COMPUTER OWNERS INC 467 

203 INTERFACE TECH CORP 262. 263 

205 IOMEGA 225 

206 IOMEGA 227 

207 IOMEGA 229 

204 IOMEGA 423 

210 IADE COMP PROD 478. 479 

211 IADE COMP PROD 480 

212 IAMECO ELECTRONICS 76. 77 

213 1DR MICRODEVTCES INC 488 489 

214 1DR MICRODE VICES INC 490 491 

215 IDR MICRODEVTCES INC . 492 

216 IUKI INDUSTRY OF AMERICA 185 

217 KADAK PRODUCTS 324 

218 KIMTRON CORP 388 
221 KRUEGER TECHNOLOGY INC 473 



TO GET FURTHER information on the products advertised in BYTE either 
pick up your touch-tone telephone and use TIPS (if you are a subscriber), 
or fill out the reader service card. Either way full instructions are pro- 
vided following this reader service index which is provided as an addi- 
tional service by the publisher, who assumes no liability for errors or 
omissions. 'Correspond directly with company. 



Inquiry No. 



Page No. 



220 


LABORATORY MICROSVS 


18 




LANGLEY-STCLAIR 


147 


2W 


LANIER BUSN PROD 398 


399 


231 


LATTICE INC 


198 


232 


LEADING EDGE PROD 


49 


233 


LEVEL 5 RESEARCH 


299 


•127 


LIFEBOAT ASSOC 


419 


428 


LIFEBOAT ASSOC 


266 


235 


LINDE TECHNOLOGY i\C 


26 


236 


I.INTEK INC 


470 


237 


LIONHEART PRESS 


416 


2 18 


LOCKHEED-GETEX 


149 


440 


LOGIC PROGRAMMING 


371 


441 


LOGIC PROGRAMMING 


371 


239 


LOGICAL DEVICES 


218 


240 


LOGICAL DEVICES 


476 


241 


LOMAS DATA PRODUCTS 


203 


242 


l.YBEN COMP SYS 


470 


243 


LYBEN COMP SYS 


472 


244 


LYCO COMPUTER 


211 


24 5 


MAGNUM PC 


290 


247 


MANX SOFTWARE SYS 


53 


248 


MARTIN MARIETTA IT SFTW . 


133 


249 


MARVEL SOFTWARE 


433 


250 


MARYMAC INDUSTRIES 


472 


251 


MASTER BYTE COMP OF NY 


476 


2 52 


MAXELL DATA PRODUCTS . 


7 


253 


MAYNARD ELECTRONICS 


15 


2 54 


MEGATE1 COMPUTER TECH 


86 


255 


MERR1TT COMP PRODUCTS 


466 


2 5b 


MFI ENTERPRISE 


150 


257 


MICRAY ELECTRONICS 


174 


433 


MICRO .AGE COMP STORES 


217 


2 58 


MICRO DATA BASI- SYS 


67 


259 


MICRO DESIGN INT L 


378 


260 


MICRO MART INC 62. 63 


2b 1 


MICRO PRODUCTS INC 


456 


262 


MICROCOMPUTER ACCESSORIES 


295 


263 


MICROCOMPUTER ACCESSORIES 


295 


264 


MICROGRAFX 


323 




MICROMINT INC 


413 


4 12 


MICROPRO . 80 81 


265 


MICROPROCESSORS UNLTD 


460 


266 


MICROSHOP 


450 


• 


MICROSOFT CORP 20 21 




MICROSOFT CORP 


253 


* 


MICROSOFT CORP 


255 


• 


MICROSOFT CORP 


271 


• 


MICROSOFT CORP . 


279 


267 


M1CROSTUF INC . 


236 


268 


MICROTI ME 


4 


269 


MICROWAY 


276 


270 


MIDWEST MICRO-PERIPHERALS 


34 


• 


MINORITY Hi-TECH INDUSTRIFS 


254 


272 


MOTEL COMPUTERS LTD 


320 


27 3 


MTI SYSTEMS CORP 


52 


274 


MULTI-TECH SYSTEMS 


368 


276 


NANTUCKET 


112 


277 


NANTUCKET 


112 


278 


NATL. PUBLIC DOMAIN SFTW . 


68 


279 


NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS 


50 


74 


NCDA 


468 


281 


NEC HOME INFORMATION SYS CHI 


282 


SI- STAR SYSTEMS INC 


75 


28? 


NEW GENERATION SYS 


406 


284 


NIGHTOWL SOFTWARE 


163 


28 5 


NORTH AMERICAN BUSN SYS 


410 




NORTH HILLS CORP 


466 




NORTH HILLS CORP 


468 




NRI SCHOOLS ELECTR DIV 


417 


28b 


OBERON INTERNATION 


178 


287 


ODESTA PUBLISHING 36 37 


288 


OLDEN 


1 36 


284 


OPTO-22 


352 


290 


OPTO-22 


352 


242 


ORION INSTRUMENTS 


396 


420 


ORYX SYSTEMS 426 


427 


421 


ORYX SYSTEMS 426 


427 


422 


ORYX SYSTEMS . 426 


427 


244 


PC HORIZONS 


476 


245 


PC NETWORK 332 


333 


296 


PACIFIC EXCHAN 1 






466, 468 474 


476 



APRIL 1985 'BYTE 495 



READER SERVICE 





ry No. Page No. 


Inqui 










Inqu 




inqui 


ry No. Page No. 


Inquiry No. Page No. 


ry No. Page No. 


297 




476 


334 


.... 


155 


363 


244 


386 


TOPAZ INC 240 


2 98 


PC PIPI 


466 


335 




155 


365 


STAR MICRONICS 434 435 


388 


TOSHIBA AMERICA INC 274, 275 


299 




476 
463 


336 
337 


■ 

MICS 


55 
460 


366 

419 


468 
HINE 299 


389 
391 


rRANSTECTOR SYSTEMS N< 393 


300 


M1TED 


UBIQUITOUS SYSTEMS 464 


301 




297 


338 


:orp 


457 


367 


STRIDE V 208 


392 


UNISOURCE . 59 


302 


INC 


l?7 


339 


H -ORP 


457 


416 


61 


393 


' TED PROCESSING INC 195 


303 


POCKET TECHNOLOGY 


349 


340 


.- 


464 


368 


298 


394 


VEN-TEL INC 27 


}05 


88 89 


341 


VARE 


472 


369 


SUMMIT SOFTWARi TECHN INC 412 


426 


VERTEX 418 


}0f> 




233 


342 


SAKATA 


238 


370 


448 


395 


259 


307 


■ 


476 


343 


WARE 


319 


371 


SUNTRON 452 


396 


VICTORY ENT TECHNOLOGY 92 


413 




8 


344 


' TERS 


459 


417 


SUPER COMPUTER 12. 13 


397 


Y.M COMPUTER ELECTR 474 


3 12 


PRINCETON GRAPHIC SYS 








82 


418 


SUPER CQ.MP 12. 13 


398 


A H FREEMAN 6 COMPANY 462 




235 237 239 241 


243 


346 


St Ml DISK SYSTEMS 


336 


373 


SUPERS 152 


399 


NG COMPANY 476 


313 


1 R| AND INC 


347 




\LTtES 


302 


374 


SUPERS 391 




WAREHOUSE DATA PRi D 267 


314 


• ONE 


461 






188 


375 


SYNALTA SYS i 1 I 470 


400 


WATERLOO DISTANCE" mu IN 66 


3 1", 


N 


372 


347 


SI WABER 


158 




SYSGEN INC 409 


402 


WINTER CORP 362 


317 


SHOP 


354 


348 


' ; MS 


374 


376 


SYSTEMS AUTOMATION CORP 151 


403 


WINTEK CORP 470 


J IK 


■ MICRO DIS1 R 


477 


349 


SMALL BUSINFSS COMPSYS 


464 


377 


SYSTEMS MANAGMNT ftSSCX 213 


404 


WYSSWARE 30 


319 


5 PRODUCTS . 


17 


350 


SOCIETY-APPLIED LRN 


416 


378 


SYSTEMS STRATEGIES 206 


405 


XEROX CORP 94 95 


3 20 


PURPLI < i >MPUTING 


464 




S< >F1 WAREHOUSE INC 


91 


379 


TATUNC 145 


406 


YORK 10 474 


321 


QANT! X DIV 


226 


351 


SOFTC RAH INC 


24 


424 


IAXAN 199 


407 


ZSTEM COMMUNICATIONS DIV 481 


»22 


1 -f ARCH 


264 


352 


50FTI INI CORP 


87 


425 


TAX AN ( 199 






323 


■RP 


191 


353 


SOFTSTYLt INC 


52 




TEKTRONIX INC . 192 


* Correspond directly trifi 


3 24 


QUALITY PRIMERS 


462 


354 


Rl LINK THf- 


231 


381 


TELEI BYTE TECHNOLOGY INC 324 






32S 




466 


355 


\RE SOLUTIONS INC 


395 


382 


TELETEK ENTERPRISES INC 31 






126 


\TED 


146 


356 


■ rreic 


51 




E.MS 32 5 


INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING SECTION 


327 




167 


316 


'. SYSTEMS 


358 




MENTS M 






128 




169 


358 


SYSTEMS 


361 




98 99 


500 


AMERICAN BUYING & EXPORT 32D 


329 




462 


357 


SOLUTION WARE CORP 


464 


384 


THREE M COM 140 141 


• 


BYTE 32B 


130 


OUESTIONAIRE SERVICE CO 


462 


359 




293 


142 


TIGERTk. 460 


501 


CASIO COMPUTER CO 32C 


331 


RADIO - ; 


CIV 


360 


SP COMPUTERS 


78 




ROBERT GRAPHICS 289 


502 


MULTITECH INDUSTRIAL CORP 32A 


332 


ORP 


200 


361 


'.' SOFTWARE 


165 




riNNEY ROBERT GRAPHICS 428 






333 


CIES 


466 


362 


SPRUCE CORP 


132 


385 


240 


• • rks please 



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496 BYTE • APRIL 1^85 



ONLY PINWRITER DOT MATRIX 
PRINTERS CAN SAY ALL THIS. 




M 



Pmwnter printers are 
available m black & white 
and color models 



I CAN PRINT PICA HIGH SPEED. 



OR PICA CORRESPONDENCE QUALITY 



OR PICA NEAR LETTER QUALITY 



OR ELITE CORRESPONDENCE QUALITY 



OR ELITE HEAR LETTER QUALITY 

OR PROPORTIONALLY SPACED CORRESPONDENCE 






The reason most people buy a dot matrix 
printer is for versatility. 

And that's exactly why you should buy 
an NEC Pinwriter" printer. 

Pinwriters are the final word in 
versatility. 

The Pinwriter lets you do more than any 

other dot matrix 

printer. Three different 

speeds cover all your 

needs— 300, 900 or 

1800 words per minute, 

Pinwriter printers 
also let you create 



OR PROPORTIONALLY SPACED NEAR LETTER QUALITY 



OR ANY PROGRAMMABLE TYPEFACE 



The Pmwnter prints m 8 differer' l 
at the touch of a button 



44 




unbelievably clear 
graphics. In black and 
white. Or in seven 
crisp colors. 
But that's not all. 
Every Pinwriter gives you 
a choice of 8 different 
type styles. Plus, you can 
choose from a wide 
range of easy-to 



With Ptnwntei you _- 

use NEC forms 

and speed with 
one finger 



handlers 



And to make things even easier, 
Pinwriter printers work with the most 
popular PCs and software packages. 

All the controls at your fingertips. 

The Pinwriter is also much easier to use 

than any 

other dot 

matrix 

printer. 

Press a 
button and 
you can 
change 
typefaces. 
Or speeds. 
Even spacing 

and pitch selection. And that's a refresh- 
ing change. 

Of course, you can do it through your 
software, too. 

y^ See your dealer 

The quicker broun fox for a QUOte. 

The quickest brown fox For all this versatility, 

you might expect to 
pay a bundle for a 

Pinwriter printer. Not so. Pinwriter 

prices are also easy to handle. 
For more 

information, call 

1-800-343-4418 

(in MA call 617- 

264-8635). And 

find out why 

more and more 

PC owners are 

saying, "NEC 

and me? 



w 



The quick brown fox 



Three printing speeds cover all vow 



>y to handle. 

NEC t* 

AND™ 




lit 



Pmwnter is a trademark of NEC Corp. 




NEC Information 
Systems, Inc. 

141 A Massachusetts Ave. 
Department 1610 
Boxborough. MA 01719 J 

Inquiry 281 



y 



TANDY.. 

Clearly Superior 

Just look what the experts said 
about the new Tandy 1000. 



TM 



On DeskMate™ software: 

"It's hard to place a cash value on DeskMate, 
because it is included in the system price. How- 
ever, it is fair to say that it takes the place of 
literally hundreds of dollars of separately 
purchased software. In fact, we believe that 
many people will make DeskMate their most- 
used program.** 

— Popular Computing 

"It is truly integrated and easy to use, and it 
truly allows you to get your Tandy 1000 up and 
productive the moment you set it up. It is the 
crowning achievement of an extremely impres- 
sive system.** 

— Creative Computing 



On value: 

"Separately, either the Tandy 1000 or Desk- 
Mate would be worthy of serious considera- 
tion. Combined, they make a powerful, cost- 
effective package. Moreover, the Tandy 1000 
offers substantia! price and feature benefits 
over its biggest competitors-— the IBM PC and 
PCjr. Clearly, the Tandy lOOO wins this battle in 
the computer marketing war.** 

— Popular Computing 

On price: 

'* . . . the Tandy 1000*s price can*t be beat , . . busi- 
nesses with several IBMs already installed can 
add units for about two-thirds the cost of a PC.** 

—80 Micro 



TANDY 

lOOO 

with 
DeskMate 



See the Tandy 1000 today. 
It's the best $2000 computer 
you can buy... for only $1199* 

Available at over 1200 

Radio Shack Computer Centers and at 

participating Radio Shack stores and dealers. 

Radio /haek 

COMPUTER CENTERS 

A DIVISION OF TANDY CORPORATION 

Inquiry 331 




* Price does not include monitor. Tandy 1000 prices apply at Radio Shack Computer Centers and 

50; December, 1984, 80 Micro, pp. 44-46, 48-51; and Dennis Allen and Frederic S. Langs, pp. 84-4 



nd dealers. Reprinted with permission from December, 1984, Creative Computing, pp. 44, 49- 
iar Computing. IBM/registered TM International Business Machines Corp.